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Craig lived for sports, family, business
Coach had knack for making his players better
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Supposedly, it is my job to chronicle for you the great things that former Cedar Cliff football and wrestling coach Bob Craig did in his 72 years on Earth, 40 of them spent imploring young athletes to hit a little harder, move a little quicker, think a little better.
This, I cannot do.
It’s not that I won’t. I can’t.
I never sweated through one of Craig’s grueling practices, never suffered the wrath of his famous critiques, never sat through his phone calls to recruiters and coaches on his athletes’ behalf, some of which ended with “You’re nuts if you don’t take this kid.”
Craig’s bountiful life, which ended early yesterday in Holy Spirit Hospital with family at his side, was not particularly complex.
He lived on coaching, business, family and a small dose of conservative politics, with the priority often jumbled, as he once admitted to me. Very little else crept under his door and cluttered his life.
So, it wasn’t tough to get a grip on Craig’s passions. What was tough to get a grip on, for the outsider, was Craig.
As a coach, he took good athletes and made them great. He took marginal athletes and somehow made them 15-match winners in wrestling or a possession receiver in football who managed to make one critical catch a year.
He won nearly 800 team events — 282 football games and a whopping 513 wrestling matches — and he did it at least as often with the borderline athlete as he did with the proficient.
Working the edge of the wrestling mat and preserving a 3-2 decision in a critical dual meet was a Cedar Cliff tradition.
I do not know if that particular talent qualifies as a Great Work, but it certainly qualifies as Great Coaching.
He did so with the most astounding public persona.
Were one only to witness Craig in the narrow view as a passionate, active, screaming, chair-slapping coach, one would have thought Craig to be certifiably mad, or at least really, really angry.
Let there be no doubt: His deeply competitive nature sometimes found itself at the end of a stabbing index finger when he disagreed with the jurisprudence being executed directly in front of him.
And for many midstate fans, that was all they knew of Bob Craig.
As usual, it was an incomplete and distorted picture.
“He wanted the best for his kids, and he would do whatever it took, “said current Cedar Cliff wrestling coach Rick Peifer, who took over the Colts’ wrestling program in 1998 after 15 years as an assistant. “If it meant working the ref, he worked the ref. If it meant going over lineups for that one key matchup, he’d do it.
“He just always looked out for his kids, “Peifer said. “That was his life.”
Descriptions of this Schuylkill County orphan-turned-millionaire — he owned numerous West Shore properties and turned them into a healthy cash flow — by those who knew him best bring endless words of praise at complete odds with his angry-coach reputation.
Honest. Compassionate. Loving. Loyal.
Especially loyal.
“He was fiercely loyal to the people who were also loyal to him, “said Cedar Cliff graduate Tom Kirchhoff, who played quarterback for the Colts’ 1988 District 3-AAAA championship team that lost in the first PIAA state championship game.
“He got so much flak for crossing a picket line to coach us our senior year, but he accepted it, “said Kirchhoff, who later played at Lafayette and had a stop with the Philadelphia Eagles. “Nothing meant more to him than coaching kids.”
Indeed, it might be Craig’s decision in 1988 to defy the West Shore Education Association’s decision to strike — which he said he voted for — that defines his career as much as his 795 victories.
“He had so much resolve that the consequences did not matter to him, “said Len McLaughlin, Craig’s long-time football assistant.
“I thought it was an admirable position for him to take. Let there be no doubt that Bob was the most competitive guy you’d ever meet. But let there be no doubt how dedicated he was to his players.”
Many of those players chipped in physically and financially when Cedar Cliff added the Bob W. Craig Weight Room, a spacious facility that replaced the cramped conditions that passed for a weight facility at the school.
Many of those same players provided Craig with so much memorabilia it overran the sizable trophy room he kept in his New Cumberland-area home with his second wife, Carol.
McLaughlin, the Colts boys’ track coach who affirmed Craig’s love for that sport (was there any he didn’t like?), told a great story about his own hiring at Cedar Cliff.
“I wanted the line coaching job, but Bob wouldn’t hire me; he didn’t think I was qualified because I didn’t have much experience, “McLaughlin said. “I ended up interviewing [for a teaching job] with Ray Wertz, who was the superintendent at the time.
“Ray said, ‘You’ve not only got the phys ed job, you’ve also got the line coaching job for football. Now, it’s your job to walk over there and tell Bob Craig that you’re his new line coach.'”
Guess Craig wasn’t the ogre as he was so often portrayed; he kept McLaughlin around for another three decades.
ROD FRISCO: 255-8122 or [email protected]
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