In the 1970s Bluefield head coach Fred Simon was far from the household name he is now.
He was just a teenager playing football but the foundation of a lifelong friendship was being laid.
On Friday when his Beavers travel to Independence he’ll face off against a friend he’s known for 50 years, Independence head coach and Bluefield graduate John H. Lilly.
For two of the area’s longest tenured vets the stakes have never been higher with a spot in Wheeling on the line, but even as they prepare for the biggest game of the year each speaks highly of the other.
The glowing remarks aren’t much of a surprise, after all, they both come from the same mold.
Both played for legendary Bluefield coach John Chmara, though four years apart. When Lilly decided to get into coaching after finishing up with the Marine Corps his first stop was on Simon’s staff in 1987, the second year of the latter’s tenure as the head coach of the Beavers.
“He’s a great guy and a good person,” a giddy Fred Simon said. “He was there with us and I would’ve liked to have had him more but he was there for a year. He was a former Beaver just like me. I knew I wanted him to coach with us and he was available and I asked him and he said sure.”
“It’s been 40 years almost,” Lilly said. “He hired me as a student coach cause I had just gotten out of the Marine Corps and I had to finish up some student teaching. He knew me ever since I was a young kid, so he hired me as a student coach.”
As Lilly notes, the relationship between the two sprouted well before they roamed the sidelines together in 1987. Simon, a close family friend, watched Lilly grow up.
“His family, his uncle and I were best of friends growing up,” Simon said. “The Lilly family, I played football with his uncle and when he was little, I mean just tiny – elementary school on, I’m down there with his uncle David and their family. I’d go to Hungry Mother Park and things like that with them and just watched him and his brother Joe grow up. I’m hanging around the family and I’ve known him many, many years. What a great family. They’re all just super people.”
The relationship between their families laid the foundation of a friendship both have benefited from and maintained for decades.
Earlier this year when the Beavers were dealing with quarantines and mandated shutdowns, Simon confided in Lilly some of his frustrations in a phone call. It wasn’t unique though. Both have decades worth of coaching experience to rely on, but both faced the same unknown and discussed how to deal with it. Last season Lilly’s Independence squad dealt with much of what Simon’s did this past year, going several weeks in between football games, hoping to make a jolt for the playoffs.
“I’d be willing to help John in any way I could,” Simon said. “He’s a good guy and again being a Bluefield guy, any type of advice I could help him with and vise versa, then I would definitely take and be grateful for.”
“We kind of shared ideas on how we were going to handle Covid,” Lilly said. “We shared a lot of ideas on how to handle it and how we were doing things and how they were doing things. It was just kind of a territory nobody had ever been through. It was new to everybody and there probably wasn’t anybody in the state of West Virginia I trusted more to pick his brain than him. He’s really the only person I talked to about it.”
Of course being on Simon’s staff and knowing him for decades has allowed Lilly to observe and absorb much of what’s made Simon successful. While the X’s and O’s of the sport are important and both will forget more than most fans will ever know in that regard, the true value of a coach can also be measured in how they handle matters off the field as well as on it.
That’s not lost on Lilly and it’s one of the things he’s picked up from his friend.
“He’s a people person and he’s really good at getting kids to play,” Lilly said. “He never really had a player that said he didn’t like playing for coach. I think that’s such an important thing these days with kids not coming out like they used to. Just sit back and kind of observe how he handles people and how he handles situations. When we talk we don’t always talk about football. We talk about family because our families were real tight growing up. When we talk we don’t always talk about football. Sometimes we just talk. We talked this summer for about an hour and didn’t even mention football. As we get older, people we know are getting up in age so we just talk about life.”
Lilly’s respect for his friend and colleague also stems from the culture the two familiarized themselves with while playing for the Beavers. Simon has adjusted well and conquered mountains that would be impossible for most. It’s one of the first things Lilly acknowledges when asked what he’s noticed from afar that makes Simon stand out.
The Independence head coach knows what the standard is in the program from his days as a player and a coach.
On the heels of Merrill Gainer and Chmara, two coaches that led the Beavers to a combined six titles in a 25-year span from 1959-84, Simon carved his own path, withstanding the brunt of an eight-year playoff drought at the start his career to ultimately compete for 12 state championships, winning five of them.
“The old adage is don’t follow the legend,” Lilly said. “He had to follow two legends and that’s tough to do. I don’t know if anybody could give him enough credit for the transition of taking the school from 1,200 or 1,300 students to 500 students. In doing that, he kept the same level of excellence if not better. Some would argue he’s had more success than the previous two coaches. But you’ve seen schools in southern West Virginia, for instance a Mount View, that once had great football traditions but because of loss of population totally lost their identity and the clout, for lack of a better word. I don’t think people in southern West Virginia give him enough credit for that. I don’t know anybody that I know that could’ve done that.
“To win all those state championship in triple-A, lose almost 1,000 students and still continue to go to 12 more state championships. People always say they’re always blessed with athletes, and yeah but so are the people they play. It’s not like Fairmont, Weir and Bridgeport don’t have athletes either. I think that’s something that should be a part of his legacy. I don’t know that anybody can follow him, I really don’t. That standard is so high and you see it and you smell it when you walk into the building and you see all the state championship teams and award winners. I don’t know that anybody gives him enough credit for it. I Think he’s the best coach in the state of West Virginia. I’m not buttering him up. Whether we win or lose I’ll still feel that way. Why wouldn’t I pick his brain? I’m not the smartest guy in the world but I try to surround myself with people who are.”
Email: tylerjackson@lootpress.com and follow on Twitter @tjack94
