Bailey had big impact on area’s football

The first few years of A.J. Hoenstine's football coaching career were rough ones. It took five seasons for the former Central High School star to post a winning season at his alma mater.

When times were tough, Hoenstine always knew he could get some support from Jack Bailey.

"It seemed like any game or football function, he was there. When I started, he treated me like I'd been around awhile,'' Hoenstine said.

Bailey died Sunday at his home in Philipsburg at the age of 67 after a battle with illness. A memorial service will be held Saturday at Philipsburg's Trinity United Methodist Church at 3 p.m.

Scholastic football was a big part of Bailey's life, and he meant a lot to football in central Pennsylvania.

"He was the backbone of the coaches as a group,'' Tyrone's John Franco, who became friends with Bailey when he got his first head coaching job at Altoona in 1986, said. "He was one of those guys who made you proud to be in the coaching fraternity. When his coaching was done, he continued to help coaches and players.''

Bailey was a head or assistant coach at West Branch and Philipsburg-Osceola from the mid-1960s into the early 1990s with teams that won more than 100 games.

In recent years, his involvement actually grew. At the time of Bailey's passing, he was the assistant executive director of the Pennsylvania Scholastic Football Coaches Association, the clinic director for the state chapter of the National Football Foundation, the game director for the Lezzer Lumber All-Star Classic, the secretary/treasurer of the Big Eight Conference, Mountain Athletic Conference and Mountain League for football and the secretary of the Central Pennsylvania Football Coaches Association.

"Is he going to be missed? Absolutely,'' said Bellwood-Antis coach and PSFCA East West Game director John Hayes. "He did a lot of the leg work for the Lezzer Lumber [game]. He did the bureaucratic stuff people don't like to do.

"It will be difficult to find somebody who has the kind of compassion to bring different things to a solution. I don't think one person will be able to do all the things he did.''

It was in Milesburg at a monthly meeting and recruiting film dispersal for the CPFCA that Hayes, Huntingdon's Jim Zauzig, Indian Valley's Tom Shearer and a number of other area high school football coaches were gathered Tuesday night and remembered Bailey.

"He was very warm, and very focused on what he wanted to do,'' Zauzig, who met Bailey in the 1980s when they were assistants at Tyrone and Philipsburg-Osceola, respectively. "He was a proponent of having six classifications for football. The story is that [PIAA executive director] Brad Cashman entered one of the meetings and said he didn't want to here about 'Bailey's six classifications.' Cashman got tired of hearing about it meeting after meeting.''

By this summer, Cashman was actually one of the people supporting Bailey's proposal, which narrowly missed passage.

"He did a fantastic job,'' Hayes said.

Bailey was instrumental in helping Hayes take his Bellwood-Antis program to a new level when he advocated bringing the Blue Devils, Bishop Guilfoyle and some other schools into the Big Eight as it expanded into the Mountain Athletic Football Conference.

"Those were probably the four best years of our scheduled competition,'' Hayes said. "Jack worked very hard to create a situation where everybody would be satisfied. He was always trying to find the best for everybody.''

His peers said there was one group in particular that held the highest place on Bailey's long list of priorities.

"He was in it for the kids,'' Hoenstine said.

In fact, Bailey requested that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the recently-established CPSFCA Scholarship Fund.

Bailey is survived by three children of his own and 10 grandchildren, along with his wife, Carla.

Bailey is also survived by three of his four brothers. Mike currently is an assistant coach at Penn State Altoona and has won state high school championships in Virginia and Pennsylvania. Roger is an American Legion baseball hall-of-famer.

But Bailey had a lot of other brothers in coaching who, today, are missing him as well.

"He did so much for football around here. I don't think anyone's going to replace him,'' Hoenstine said.

"All the coaches loved him,'' Franco added. "He will be sorely missed.''