Handlin named to 2019 M-S Education Foundation Hall of Fame
By FRED KRONER
fred@mahometnews.com
Eighteen different people have coached team or individual state champions during the history of the Mahomet or Mahomet-Seymour athletic programs, which can be traced back more than a century.
In that time, no one can match the success of Robert (Moose) Handlin.
He coached three sports and was a part of state championships in each.
He was the defensive coordinator on the 1977 Class 2A title-winning football team, which produced a shutout in the state finals.
In wrestling, Handlin coached state champs four consecutive years, starting in 1978.
He directed the girls’ track and field team to back-to-back state crowns in 1979 and 1980. During a six-year span from 1979-84, at least one of his athletes or relays earned state titles in five of the seasons.
The all-weather high school track has been named in his honor.
Another accolade is on the horizon for Handlin, who passed away from liver cancer in 2004. He will be one of four inductees in the Mahomet-Seymour Education Foundation Hall of Fame.
The ceremony will be Sept. 27, the same night the M-S varsity football team will play its homecoming game against Mount Zion.
Others to be enshrined in the fall are Ryan Berger, Dani Bunch and Brett Melton.
Each will be profiled separately in the Mahomet Daily over the next two weeks.
**
Teaching and coaching wasn’t Handlin’s first choice for a profession when he graduated from Illiopolis high School in 1958.
“He worked road construction,” said his widow, Sherry Handlin. “He was out of high school 10 years before he took his first college class.
“He hadn’t even taken the ACT. His mom and I, and some kids (from Illiopolis) convinced him to go.”
For years, Handlin would leave the construction site and go straight to the high school, where he served as an assistant coach in football and track.
“He had a pretty good boss, or that wouldn’t have happened,” Sherry Handlin said. “His heart was always with the kids.
“Because he spent so much time at the school, he needed to do this. He’d come right after work, wearing his steel-toed shoes.”
Handlin first enrolled at Lincoln Land Community College, in Springfield. Even approaching his 30th birthday, he wasn’t just a student.
“He was on the track team and both years went to nationals,” said Sherry Handlin, who had been married to Bob for three years when he started college.
Bob Handlin graduated from Eastern Illinois in 1972, completing his degree in three years thanks to taking summer classes.
In the fall of 1972, he arrived at Mahomet-Seymour as a seventh-grade science teacher and a football coach with frank Dutton, who was starting his second year with the Bulldogs.
**
“He was applying for jobs all over the country,” Sherry Handlin said.
Bob Handlin learned about the opening at M-S and knew that the high school principal was Darrel Fulton, who had worked at Illiopolis during part of the time he had coached there.
The high school also needed a head wrestling coach. Handlin was the selection.
“He was meant to be a coach,” Sherry Handlin added. “He loved what he did.”
Wrestling was somewhat of a challenge It wasn’t offered at Illiopolis.
“He had no background in wrestling,” Sherry Handlin said. “Tom Porter was his right-hand man. He would go to Tom’s house and have his kids (Rob and Brett) show him moves.”
Handlin was a fast learner. In his third year with the wrestling program, he had an athlete reach the state championship match (112-pound Matt Miller in 1975).
In three more years, he coached his first state champ (167-pound Paul Clark) and had at least one titlist each of his final four years with wrestling.
**
By the time Handlin coached his first wrestling champion, he already was in possession of a state championship medal.
Earlier that school year, the football team had earned its crown.
In his second year in the M-S district, Handlin became a three-sport coach.
“I think they needed a (girls’) track coach, and he said, ‘OK’ “ Sherry Handlin said. “Back then, you picked up coaching to make some extra money.”
He turned the track program into a powerhouse, not just for the area, but at the state level.
Handlin coached M-S to six top 10 team finishes at state. He had three runners win individual state titles and three relay units were also triumphant at the Class 1A meet.
Overall, he coached 16 individual state medal-winners and 14 state-placing relays.
Tom Willard hadn’t yet started volunteering at the high school as a throws coach, but when his youngest son (Mike) was in seventh-grade, he arranged for Sunday lessons at the high school with Handlin.
“I shagged and tried to learn what I could,” Willard said. “I tried to throw in grade school, but we only had one coach for all the events.
“I didn’t want my son to not have someone to watch (and tutor) him.”
He continued to watch Handlin as he worked with the high school girls.
“Moose was a very good motivator,” Willard said. “He related well to the kids and the kids liked him and would run through a wall for him.
“He was a tough coach, but they knew he was pushing them to make them better.”
**
Handlin stepped away from wrestling following the 1980-81 season, with a 130-48-1 dual-meet record in nine seasons.
He was obligated to give up football and girls’ track at the end of the 1983-84 school year.
“When he became the junior high principal, he couldn’t coach,” Sherry Handlin said.
She didn’t have to think long to reveal his favorite sport to coach.
“Whatever the season was,” Sherry Handlin said.
She became a fan as well, attending as many of the games and meets as possible.
“That was our entertainment,” Sherry Handlin said. “We moved from sport to sport. That’s not a bad life.”
After eight years as the junior high school principal, the Handlins left for Indiana in the fall of 1992 when Bob accepted a position at Delphi High School.
He was there for 13 years, before retiring.
When he ended his career in Illinois, the M-S faculty and staff presented a plaque to Bob Handlin.
One of the comments read, “In a world of billion, you are truly unique.”
Another comment was, “Your greatest asset was your ability to be a friend.”
**
The Handlins had nearly left Mahomet the previous year. Bob Handlin was one of two finalists for the principal’s job at Harrison High School, in West Lafayette, Ind.
He wasn’t the choice and Sherry Handlin said, “It was a good thing he didn’t get it.”
Their only child, Dirk, was an upcoming senior and she wasn’t excited about the prospects of relocating him for his final year.
The decision benefited the M-S program as well.
Dirk Handlin — who was born on his parents’ eighth wedding anniversary in 1973 — was a double state champion as a senior in 1992, winning both the shot put and discus titles.
He went on to play football for four years at Purdue, but the family’s move wasn’t case of following their child.
“Bob signed his contract in January (of 1992) and Dirk signed (his letter of intent) in February,” Sherry Handlin said.
**
Sherry Handlin can only speculate what her husband would have thought about the recognition.
“He would think someone else deserved it more,” she said. “He’d think it was a nice honor, but it wasn’t the reason he did it.
“He loved his job everyday. He would say, ‘no one gets any notoriety on their own. They have people helping along the way.’ “
After her husband’s death, Sherry Handlin heard from many of his former students and athletes.
Former M-S wrestler Terry Vinyard related a memorable quote from Handlin which had stayed with him for decades: “Don’t fear your opponent, but fear not being prepared to win.”
Dirk Handlin is not surprised by the quotes and tributes used to describe his father. He remembers plenty of the ones he would say, and finds one by the Greek statesman and orator
Pericles to be especially apt: “what we leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”
**
Dirk Handlin, who started a new job this week as operation manager at Suzuki Garphyttan, in South Bend, Ind., was speaking to a group recently. His speech was centered on stories about “Coach Moose.”
He didn’t identify the name of “Coach Moose” until his closing remarks, when he said, “Coach Robert ‘Moose’ Handlin was my father, and he is where I found leadership.”
Among the quotes from his father he shared in his speech were:
— “Character is what you do when no one is watching;”
— “Never give up! EVER! Even when it looks like there is no way to succeed, the only way you truly fail is to quit;”
— “There are no shortcuts to success;”
— “Success is what happens when preparation meets opportunity;”
— “There is more to learn from losing that from winning.”
Perhaps Dirk Handlin’s most telling story was also the saddest.
He spent many of his father’s final 92 days in the hospital with him and saw the numerous visitors who stopped by.
“They all reminded him of the same lesson that he had taught them 20, 30 years ago; never give up,” Dirk Handlin said. “Even as he lay there, dying, he was still teaching us all a lesson.
“This is where he taught me the toughest lesson I would ever learn. He led by example by never giving up.”
One of those visitors was long-time M-S coach and teacher Jim Risley, who told a newspaper reporter in May, 2004, “That guy is more inspiring on his back than most people are on their feet.”
On June 30, 2004, Robert ‘Moose’ Handlin passed away.
His legacy lives on.
M-S Education Foundation
Hall-of Famers
Class of 2019
Ryan Berger 1998
Dani Bunch Hill 2009
Robert ‘Moose’ Handlin Coach
Brett Melton 2000
Class of 2018
Craig Buchanan 1993
Frank Dutton Coach
Sharon Farley Goff 1980
Brian Haag 1989
James C. Kroner 1939
Rob Porter 1984
Class of 2017
Brett Camden 1989
Ed Grogg Contributor
Brian Herriott 1987
Eric Mark Johnson 1975
Phil Knell 1963
Melanie Moore Paxson 1990
Maureen Scott Renaud 2002
Marty Williams Coach
