By FRED KRONER
Circumstances can change everything.
No one knows this better than Jim Risley, who is chairman of the Hall of Fame committee for the Mahomet-Seymour Education Foundation.
Risley arrived at Mahomet-Seymour High School on Friday afternoon (Sept. 23) intent on the four announced inductees who would be honored prior to the Bulldogs’ football homecoming contest.
“I wanted to make it a special night for them,” Risley said, “and make them feel like it was a great event in their lives.”
He accomplished that mission and was surprised to learn that the night would be ultra-special for him as well.
There was a fifth Hall-of-Famer whose name had not previously been revealed. It was Jim Risley.
That didn’t mean he could suddenly shirk his other duties.
“I had to remember who I was here to take care of,” he said.
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Risley has been a fixture in the Mahomet community and the school district since he arrived as a student teacher during the 1979-80 school year.
As a child, he developed an early fondness for Mahomet.
“When we were driving from Springfield, where we were moving from, to St. Joe, we used to drive through Mahomet,” Risley said. “I always wanted to go to Mahomet.”
When it became time for Risley to seek a student-teaching position as a senior at the University of Illinois, M-S was his first choice.
“The student teaching coordinator at the UI wanted me to go to Homer, where I would be an assistant in football,” Risley recalled.
He talked to Bruce Miller, at Homer, about the opportunity and liked everything about it. Except it wasn’t Mahomet.
When he informed the student teaching coordinator he had settled on M-S, he learned that position had been given to another aspiring teacher.
“That’s when Bobby Hull was leaving (Mahomet) and Del Ryan became the coordinator teacher (in the district),” Risley said. “They made a special position for me.”
He taught physical education and driver’s education.
He got his foot in the door that year, and never left.
If not for those circumstances, Risley might not have had the chance to make a gigantic impact on the district and hundreds upon hundreds of students.
He was that close – from Mahomet to Homer – to not even being a Hall of Fame candidate.
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As a four-sport athlete at SJ-O, where he earned four varsity letters in track, three in football, two in wrestling and one in baseball, Risley developed a favorite sport by the time he graduated in 1975.
Football.
“Football was my best sport,” he said. “We weren’t very good at the time, but we gave everything we had and came to every game with the idea we could win.
“We didn’t have anything left (energy-wise) after the game.”
As he chose his career path in education, with the idea of getting into coaching, his expectation was to continue in the sport that was his passion.
“I always thought I would be a football coach,” Risley said.
He helped Frank Dutton at M-S during his student-teaching year, but that turned out to be his only year on the football staff.
“The next year they had an opening (for a teacher), but I had to take the volleyball position to get it,” Risley said.
“I had a great experience, and we had some great athletes like Bonnie Byers (Moxley), Kim Rippy and Julie Thomas,” Risley said. “We had a great season and I stayed with it until I got married (to Angie) in 1984.
“Those years changed my idea of what female athletes could do.”
His volleyball teams from 1980-84 had a combined record of 88-13.
From time to time, however, a thought occasionally crossed Risley’s mind.
“I always wondered what it would be like to be a football coach,” he said.
He hasn’t been totally removed from the gridiron game.
For the past 43 years – including this season – he has walked the sidelines on Game Night charting tackles for the Bulldogs.
Eventually, Risley received an offer to join the Bulldogs’ football staff. This was after he was entrenched in serving as the junior varsity wrestling coach (his teams were 131-0 from 1981-92) and as the girls’ track and field head coach (where his teams were 141-18 between 1984-97).
“I couldn’t handle three sports,” Risley said. “If I’d been in football, I would have spread myself too thin.”
***
By the spring of 1998, Risley switched gears with his track coaching career. Son Grant was showing an interest in pole vaulting as he was starting his high school career, and Jim Risley began tutoring pole vaulters.
He wasn’t a novice.
“I pole vaulted in high school and had a lot of fun with it,” Jim Risley said. “I appreciated what Del Ryan and Vic Zimmerman had done (previously at M-S) with pole vaulters and liked watching the tradition they had developed.”
He had a small crew to work with as he took over the duties.
“We only had two vaulters,” Jim Risley said, “Grant and Rhett Taylor and they both became 14-foot vaulters.
“It turned into being an all-consuming thing. I enjoyed it so much, I put my heart into it. I bought 80 or 90 poles (and donated them to the district).”
The expense was never an issue.
“I can’t think of a better way to spend my money,” said Jim Risley, who left the coaching duties in 2013 and was replaced by his other son, Garret.
By then, Jim Risley was establishing his niche in another area. He created an obstacle course at his rural Mahomet home in 2011.
“It was for our pole vaulters,” he said.
He wanted to see his vaulters have a break in their training regimen.
“I wanted to help them stay athletically fit for pole vaulting without having to pole vault (year ‘round),” Jim Risley said.
He was contacted by a graduate of M-S, current Monticello coach Cully Welter, whose daughter was interested in pole vaulting.
They came out to the Risley residence for some vaulting instruction.
“He saw the obstacle course and asked if he could bring his (football) guys over,” Jim Risley said, “and he did. Sixty-six of them.”
For more than a decade now, the Risley Obstacle Course has been a destination for high school and college athletes.
“It really is true,” Jim Risley said, “build it and they will come.”
***
There was one reason why the induction of Jim Risley was kept secret until about 90 minutes before the ceremony began.
Former M-S superintendent Lindsey Hall orchestrated the unprecedented addition, knowing that if Risley had any input, it wouldn’t happen.
“For a couple of years, I had been nominated,” he said, “but I felt that as long as I was the chair of the Hall committee, it wasn’t appropriate for me to be voted in.
“That’s why I was so surprised. They circumvented the process. The only other way I would have gotten in was if I had retired from the Board or had passed away.”
The Hall of Fame is the third one that includes Jim Risley. He was inducted into his high school alma mater in 2015 (the third year for that school’s Hall) and into the Illinois Wrestling Coaches and Officials Association Hall of Fame in 2018.
“I had no idea,” Jim Risley said. “I feel like I’m pretty perceptive and you can’t get things past me, but they did.”
In retrospect, there were telltale clues which he had missed.
One committee member questioned him and asked, “Where do you get the trophies,” Jim Risley said.
Once he had time to reflect, he was humbled by the honor.
“It meant everything,” Jim Risley said, “especially with the people being inducted. They all had some degree of service in their life.
“To be inducted with them meant the world. And to have Marty Williams (former M-S head wrestling coach) present the trophy, there was not anyone better.
“It was a great memory for me. Being in the Mahomet-Seymour Hall of Fame, with all of the great talent there has been, is a fraternity I am honored to be a part of.”
He considers Mahomet to be his adopted hometown.
“I’ve been very blessed to be at Mahomet-Seymour,” Jim Risley said. “I’ve met incredibly great people who have influenced me.
“Without the support of my family, I don’t know where I’d be.”
His loyalty to M-S was tested over the years. With a career success rate of 90 percent for the three varsity sports he coached (combined mark of 360-41), Risley was in demand when vacancies opened up in other area districts.
He was once offered the head wrestling coaching position at Monticello.
“I never entertained going anywhere else,” Jim Risley said. “This is where I wanted to stay.”
His considerable resume also includes 40-plus years as a volunteer in the M-S weight room, which was named in his honor in 2018.
Remember those circumstances that can change everything?
Jim Risley was a P.E. major at the University of Illinois.
At M-S, he taught sixth-grade history for 34 years. He had only two years where he taught P.E. in the afternoons.
“You think you have life planned out,” he said, “and then it takes a different fork in the road.
“I loved teaching history.”
Even after he earned his master’s degree from Eastern Illinois University, and could have gotten into administration, Jim Risley decided to stay put.
“I liked the classroom,” he said, “and the relationship you develop with the sixth-graders.
“I didn’t even move my desk in all those years. It stayed by the windows.”
With the addition of Jim Risley, the number of people enshrined in the M-S Education Foundation Hall of Fame has reached 27 since it was formed in 2017.
Other inductees in the Class of 2022 were Paul Blue (1937 graduate), Kendra (Donley) Free (2005 graduate), Larry Gnagey (1948 graduate) and Cully Welter (1987 graduate).
For Risley, the next order of business is to get back to work. He will soon chair another committee meeting where candidates for the M-S Class of 2023 will be considered.
