Male Sports Citizen of the Year 2024: Barry Bauer

As his years at Watseka High School have continued to pile up, longtime athletic director, girls basketball and softball coach and PE teacher Barry Bauer has seen it more times than he can remember.

“I see a lot of coaches, every time they get out, what do they always say when they stop? They want to spend more time with their family,” Bauer said.

Bauer, who is dipping his toe into retirement as a PE teacher after this year, isn’t beginning retirement for that reason.

Sure, he’ll spend his free time with his wife, Jody, their daughters, Taylor, Madison and Kennedy and granddaughter, Serena. But spending time with his family will be nothing new for Barry, who coached all three of his daughters while Jody was in the stands.

“How much more fortunate can I be where all my kids loved athletics and my wife loved athletics?,” Barry said. “I’ve never worried about it being time to get out for family, because the family were at all the games.”

Standing strong as a pillar of the Watseka community for decades over two separate stints, Barry is the Daily Journal’s Male Sports Citizen of the Year in his final year of full-time devotion to the Warriors.

A 1983 Cissna Park graduate, Barry finished a college career at what’s now Benedictine University in Lisle. He originally went there to pitch on the baseball team, something he ended up only doing as a senior after four years of basketball, and returned home to an offer to coach freshman basketball under longtime Warriors coach Keith Baldwin at rival Watseka.

“I played against him a few times in high school, and he gave me the speech about how good he thought I could be at it,” Barry recalled of his interview with Baldwin. “I did find out later they just couldn’t find anybody and I was on the list. But he steered me into teaching and coaching, and that was 37 years ago.”

Barry began in Watseka, teaching and coaching a freshman/JV coach until getting his first head coaching job across the state in Fulton. After an eight-year stint there, he returned to Watseka, where has since coached both boys and girls basketball to go along with softball.

His teams have had continued success, racking up an 890-242 career varsity record across the three sports, including a 727-425 mark leading the three Watseka programs at the time of print, as well as an induction into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2019.

Included in those wins are 11 regional championships — six in girls basketball, four in boys basketball (one at Watseka) and one in softball. And while those numbers might reflect on-field or on-court success, a record can’t sum up all the joy that’s come through those 1,152 contests, win or loss.

“People would look at wins or losses, regionals or sectionals, that kind of stuff, but I’ve had some teams that were a lot of fun, and we might not have won a regional,” Barry said. “And I’ve had some teams that were pretty successful, but not exactly the most fun teams. Sometimes the challenge of a group that you really enjoy coaching, maybe that are underdogs, is almost as fun as something else.”

Family first

Coaching the underdogs might be fun, but there’s no doubt that Barry’s favorite coaching memories are coaching his three daughters. They were all born across the Mississippi River in Clinton, Iowa while Barry was coaching in Fulton. He enjoyed his time there, especially his regional three-peat from 1999-2001, but he wanted the girls to have the same thing he had growing up, “the perfect sports environment.” Nothing would be perfect without family.

As Barry and Jody were both Cissna Park graduates, a return to Watseka, roughly 20 miles northeast, made sense. He came back in 2002 to coach boys basketball and softball, and began his current stint as girls basketball coach in 2014-15.

That was Taylor’s senior season, and while Barry said he would never recommend anybody attempt to coach two basketball teams at the same time, getting to coach his oldest daughter made it more than worth it. Madison, a 2017 graduate, was a sophomore on the squad. Kennedy, who graduated in 2019, was part of back-to-back regional winners as a junior and senior.

“That’s by far the top memory that I’ve had,” Barry said of coaching his girls. “Any trophy, any win, it’s the time you spend with your players (that matters most). And those players being your daughters was very special.”

With two parents that played two sports in college — Jody played four years of volleyball and a year of basketball at Milliken University in Decatur — it’s no surprise that the Bauer daughters were all three-sport standouts in volleyball, basketball and softball too, with Jody watching from behind the bench or next to the dugout, both in victory and defeat.

“I just am so grateful and proud to have been able to watch all our girls and Barry ‘s success together for those many seasons,” Jody said. “The success magnifies with that kind of investment, but so does the defeat sometimes.”

Jody used to be able to be spotted sitting alone, as she said she never wanted anyone to feel uncomfortable sitting next to the coach’s wife. But as the girls have all now wrapped up their college careers, they can be found now joining their mom in the stands.

Taylor is close by as a fourth-grade teacher at Paxton-Buckley-Loda, and Madison, a doctor in physical therapy in Bloomington, isn’t too far either. Kennedy is across the globe, as her boyfriend pursues a professional basketball career in Austria, giving the Warriors another fan half a world away.

As a teacher and coach herself — the two matched up on the softball diamond during her two-year stint as the P-B-L softball coach — Taylor said she’s gained a new appreciation for everything her dad has done over the years.

“His level of commitment to things is unbelievable,” Taylor said. “No one understands the amount of work that goes into these programs. Seeing it as a spectator, knowing that it’s my dad that made that happen, to sit back and be proud of that, it’s an honor.”

From inspired to inspiring

Whether it’s the junior high level, where he played for Bill Sanders, high school, where he played basketball for IBCA Hall-of-Famer Leonard McKean and baseball for longtime coach Darryl Focken, or college, where current Benet Academy girls coach Joe Kilbride was one of his assistants, Barry credited his coaches for putting him on the right path.

At Watseka, he coached under legends like Baldwin and Richard Reynolds, and even got close with longtime Fulton coach Stan Borgman before taking over as a head coach with the Warriors.

“I really had it lucky with the people that I worked with,” Barry said. “I fell into a lot of people that influenced me.”

In his return to Watseka, he’s worked with several coaches that have gone on to pursue similar paths to his own. Central girls basketball coach Rebecca Swigert-Fenton, the 2022 Daily Journal Female Sports Citizen of the Year, has the Comets 16-9 at the time of print in her 10th season with the Comets.

Peotone athletic director Steve Strough went on to win 347 games, four regionals and went out with a sectional championship last season as the girls basketball coach. He’s one of two boys coaches whose Watseka tenures overlapped with Barry’s, who, like Barry, were boys head coaches before finding success on the girls side. Cissna Park coach Anthony Videka and Strough each coached for two years before finding success as girls head coaches, both winning sectionals last year.

But what Videka’s learned most from Barry won’t be found in a stat sheet or record book, and trophies probably won’t be what the two discuss when they meet in a pivotal Vermilion Valley Conference matchup in Cissna Park Feb. 10.

“Barry showed me what it is truly all about,” Videka said. “Be there for your players and build those relationships with them that last a lifetime, all while being a family man. I am thankful for working with and now coaching against coach Bauer. He still pushes us to be at our best.”

After that game against the rival Timberwolves, one that will be played at his alma mater, Barry will exit the locker room to tons of family and friends, some of those friends perhaps still giving him a hard time about coaching on the other side of the rivalry he grew up in. He might see his first-born granddaughter crawling around on the same court he once helped the Cissna Park boys program to its first-ever Sweet 16 as a junior in 1982.

And he wouldn’t have it any other way.