Former Reed-Custer baseball coach Jerry Cougill honored by Comets

Now nine years into retirement, Jerry Cougill couldn’t be happier. A resident of Elkhart, Indiana, Cougill and his wife, Kay, live right by their two daughters, Amanda and Jill, and a handful of grandchildren. The former Reed-Custer baseball coach also gets to scratch his baseball itch by following the Iowa Western Community College team that’s coached by his son, Ryan.

There’s just one piece that Cougill routinely misses: Comets baseball.

Cougill got as much of that fulfillment as he could ask for Tuesday when the Comets honored him ahead of their home game against Coal City. Before their thrilling 4-3 win, the Comets recognized the two-time state champion with a pregame ceremony.

The ceremony included Cougill and his family being escorted through a tunnel of current Comets. His accomplishments were read over the PA system – state titles in 1985 and his final year, 2016; 788 wins, currently 12th in state history; 12 regional championships; three sectional titles; dozens of college players and three professionals, the late Brian Dubois, Les Norman and current New York Yankee Brent Headrick – before athletic director Nick Klein presented him with a replica of the bronze home plate in Cougill’s name that will be added to the Reed-Custer baseball facilities.

“Reed-Custer’s always going to be home to us,” Cougill said. “We have a lot of special memories here, and to have the people that you revere so much put something on for you, it means the world. It’s very, very humbling.”

No current Comets were older than first graders when Cougill retired after the team’s Class 2A state banner season, but almost every coach in the program, from head coach and 2009 Reed-Custer graduate Jake Evans on down, are former Comets who played for him.

That’s why, for Evans, Tuesday “means everything for me,” being able to pay tribute to a man Evans and countless other young men around Braidwood looked up to for generations.

“None of the stuff we have, none of the tradition we have would be here without him,” Evans said. “For him to be able to come back and be recognized in front of a great crowd of former coaches and players, I’m really happy that he got to have that special moment.”

When Cougill announced his retirement, he told the Daily Journal nine years ago that one of the things he’d miss the most would be the relationships and bonds built with coaches, including his assistants and coaches of other area programs. And as he soaked in the emotions of Tuesday, that’s still a part of the game he misses most, especially his staff.

“You don’t ever repeat that, and you can’t copy that,” Cougill said. “We’d sit in the dugout after practice as coaches and be joking with each other, then go into the coach’s locker room and be joking with each other. We’d go down to Subway and have lunch during summer ball.

“They’re just incredible guys. I miss that. That’s one of the things that I miss the most.”

Another one of the things he misses most is the connections built with players and their families. There’s perhaps not a better example than the strength of the relationship of Cougill and Evans. Evans’ late father, Wally, was a member of Cougill’s first team in 1974, a family relationship that goes back more than 50 years.

“The day my dad passed, coach Cougill was one of the first people to come knocking on my door to just come over, talk baseball and make sure I was OK,” Evans said. “He’s like a second father to me, so it means everything that we got to honor him today.”