The Hillary legacy
His lessons of caring, loyalty, and humility turned Cistercian athletes into winners on and off the gridiron

[Published in the September 2000 edition of The Continuum, the alumni magazine of Cistercian Preparatory School]

By David Stewart
“I overheard some of you talking outside my office,” Coach Tom Hillary said as he eyed his first team of Cistercian players in August of 1984. At 6'6" and 240 pounds, this monument of a man commanded their attention effortlessly. More than a very fit-looking coach, he stood with the presence of a player, a real player.
“You were saying, ‘We’ll lose to Dallas Christian, Trinity Valley will be tough, we’ll beat Fort Worth Christian, Greenhill is too strong …’”
David Patrick ’86, a junior that year, remembered embarrassed looks all around. “He didn’t name any names,” Patrick recalled. “He didn’t have to. We all had expressed those same feelings at one time or another.”
“The Cistercian Hawks,” Coach Hillary said forcefully, as if his words could turn back a tide of doubts, “do not go into any football game thinking they can’t win.”
As the weeks wore on, these words would be reinforced with deeds. Consistently. Coach Hillary, the boys began to believe, was incapable of uttering a hollow word.
“We knew he was the real deal from our first meeting,” said Kevin Spencer ’85, a team captain during the 1984 season.
“He made a point of meeting with the seniors prior to summer practices,” said Spencer, now a Dallas attorney and president of the Cistercian Alumni Association. “He wanted to know how we felt about the upcoming year, what our goals were. He asked us what we wanted out of our last season of football.” The message: This is your team, seniors; I expect you to lead it. The louder, though unspoken message: I believe in you.
Members from fifteen more senior classes would be given the same charge. These messages formed the essence of Coach Hillary’s coaching philosophy. He strived to shape boys into men by trusting them and giving them a chance to lead. Coach Hillary’s goals transcended football seasons and reached into boys’ lives. The field served as the classroom for these life lessons; Coach Hillary served as both teacher and textbook.
“I think the most important leadership trait that Coach taught and that made him so special was how much he cared for each and everyone of us,” said Chris Carlson ’85, a captain of the 1984 team and a graduate of the United States Naval Academy.
“Coach Hillary cared so much for his players that you did not want to make a mistake, not because he would yell or scream, but because he was giving his best and you wanted to do the same,” he added.
Robert Schoenvogel ’96, a captain during the ’95 season, said, “His consistently outstanding example as a coach gave us a model to follow. Whether at the beginning of two-a-days or during the last minute of the big game, Coach Hillary was the same coach, and this was what made him so special. He towered above everything and never wavered. I was an Eagle Scout,” added this 1996 Davey O’Brien Award recipient and recent graduate from the University of Virginia, “but Coach Hillary probably taught me more about leadership than my six years in the Boy Scouts.”
“The lessons he taught, the character he instilled, the leadership he portrayed were far more important than the fact that we went 6-4 and won a playoff game,” echoed Army Major Tim Bock ’85, another one of the captains during Coach Hillary’s first year at CPS. “He helped me develop into what I am today.”
The implications of Coach’s trust in his seniors did not escape them. “He taught me the ability to have faith in myself, while having the strength to rely on others,” Spencer said.
Coach Hillary’s commitment to shaping leaders and his unconditional trust in them spawned strong relationships throughout his teams. Respect spread from the coach to the seniors, and from the seniors to underclassmen. What Cistercian teams lacked in size, speed, and talent, they made up for in confidence, leadership, and team chemistry. Hillary’s Hawks entered every game believing they could win.

For Tom Hillary, there just wasn’t enough time in the day to satisfy his hunger for athletic competition. He loved the thrill of competing, and he loved to win. But at SMU in the early sixties, Hillary learned about winning the hard way.
Recruited out of Houston’s Bellaire High School by SMU Head Coach Bill Meek, Hillary received a scholarship to play quarterback in 1961. Hillary joined a talented class of players that included another quarterback named Jerry Rhome and a lineman named Mike Bulger.
On the heels of an 0-9-1 record in 1961 and a 2-7-1 finish in 1962, Coach Meek lost his job. Most members of Hillary’s recruiting class were encouraged to move on before the ’63 season to free up scholarships for the new coach, Hayden Fry. (Jerry Rhome moved on to Tulsa where he set NCAA passing records and was drafted in 1965 by the Dallas Cowboys.)
Hillary decided to stay at SMU but expected to concentrate primarily on baseball, his first love, and basketball, under legendary coach E.O. “Doc” Hayes. But Coach Fry needed Hillary’s athleticism and he turned him into a tight end and defensive end. Hillary started at both positions during his junior and senior seasons. The demands of football under Fry forced him to give up basketball.
Hillary became fast friends with fellow recruit Mike Bulger, who also stayed on under Fry. During the early sixties, Bulger’s father was an officer for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He was working with a number of Hungarian émigrés including Fr. Denis Farkasfalvy (Fr. Abbot) and Fr. Bernard Marton. This Cistercian connection would influence Bulger years later to enroll his son Brent at Cistercian (he graduated in 1983). Bulger also would go on to coach football part-time at Cistercian for many years under Coaches Cahill, Haaser, and Hillary.
In baseball, Hillary initially played first base and then shortstop. It is rare for a man of Hillary’s stature to play the shortstop position, which requires the utmost in agility and quickness. He might well have been the tallest shortstop in the history of the Southwest Conference. After college, Hillary would spend a couple of years in the Chicago Cubs organization.
In football, Hillary learned a lot about playing the game and coaching the game. Despite being under-manned, Hayden Fry’s Mustangs competed against nationally ranked non-conference teams, including USC, Michigan, and Navy. The Southwest Conference was, in those days, one of the toughest in the country. Nearly every game was close, but SMU finished 2-9 and 3-8 in 1963 and 1964, respectively.
Matched against formidable opponents week after week, Fry relied on a variety of motivational tactics to boost his team’s confidence. Coach Hillary particularly liked a poem that Coach Fry used on occasions when his team was facing a bigger, faster, more talented team (see box). After college, Hillary would continue to absorb Fry’s wisdom for a couple of years as an assistant.
SMU gave Tom Hillary a chance to compete in the three sports he loved and provided him a feel for how Division I sports programs operate. Perhaps most importantly, he learned to live by a Henry Ward Beecher quote that was featured in the sports section of the 1963 SMU yearbook, Rotunda: “Victories that are easy are cheap. Those only are worth having come as the result of hard fighting.”

During the summer of 1989, Coach Hillary met with his seniors to discuss the coming season. Nearly 70 percent of the starters from the previous year had been lost to graduation or injury. Although he always preached confidence, here before practices began, he was honest with the team’s leaders.
According to John DiPasquale ’90, one of the ’89 captains, Hillary expressed to them “a slight hint of reservation” about the team’s prospects. But this did not alter his expectations for his seniors. “Lead the team to perform its best,” he said.
“He also expressed his commitment not to use the season as simply a rebuilding year but to go all out to beat the odds that were stacked against us,” DiPasquale recalled.
“After those conversations in the summer, I never heard him talk about our weaknesses again, only our strengths. It was his belief in us that kept us together as a team during one of the toughest seasons that Cistercian has ever had.”
“We wanted to play for him,” remembered Chris Stewart ’91, a junior during the 1989 season who would serve as a captain the following year. “Why? Because he invested so much in us. I remember wondering why he did that. I mean, he could see in the off-season, when we would go in there to lift weights, that none of us were football players.”
“During that 2-8 season I think we were upset more for him than for ourselves when we lost. It was simple: We did not want to let him down because he was so dedicated to us.”
“I remember every Monday Coach Hillary would give us the synopsis on the upcoming team,” Stewart recalled. “Always the upcoming opponent was — in coach’s words — bigger, stronger, faster and more talented. He would state, ‘We play these guys 10 times, we win two... let’s make it one of those two.’ Not great odds, but I remember always feeling as if we had a chance.”
Only rarely did Coach Hillary lose his temper during that trying season. DiPasquale recalls one instance in particular, during a game against a much larger and more talented Houston Episcopal team.
“They were running all over us and beating us by over 30 points at the half. During halftime, Coach laid into us as I had never seen before because he knew we could do better. We played them close to even in the second half. It was the best half of football we played that year.”
“After the game, Coach came up to me in the trainer’s room as I was lying there in complete exhaustion,” DiPasquale said. “He told me how proud he was of how we played.”
Although the losses began to stack up that season, “we never once got down on ourselves,” said DiPasquale, now a Captain in the U.S. Air Force, controlling Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation satellites in Colorado Springs. “Coach taught me how to lead in difficult circumstances, and those lessons have served me well ever since.”
Coming into the final game of the season, the Hawks had earned just one victory in nine games. “There was no way he was going to let us lose that last game against T.M.I.,” Stewart said. “It was Homecoming.” For the occasion, Coach Hillary altered his normal Monday synopsis.
“We play these guys once,” he told the team. “We win once.”
“He made it clear that there was no other option,” said Stewart. “When we came in the locker room on Friday before the game, there were flyers on everyone’s locker that read in big letters, ‘WE WILL WIN.’ There was absolutely no question in our minds that we were going to win that game, even if we were overmatched on paper. And we did. Coach instilled that confidence in us and it carried over to the next year.” The Hawks would suffer through just one other losing season during Coach Hillary’s tenure.
“We played for him,” emphasized Stewart, “and he coached for us.”

“I would never leave Cistercian because I am a Hawk,” Wyatt Maxwell ’00 remembered Coach telling some of the seniors this year. “I am one of you. I wear that ring with the hawk on it everyday. I wear it because it is part of me.”
But, with a reputation as one of the finest coaches in the Metroplex, Coach Hillary had been wooed with lucrative offers. According to area coaches, Coach Hillary could have coached just about anywhere he wanted, public or private.
Two of Hillary’s longtime assistants ended up in head coaching positions. (Mike Washburn was hired as head coach at Jesuit. Steve McCarthy took the head coaching job at Oakridge in 1998.) But Coach Hillary stayed at Cistercian. The circumstances under which he came to Cistercian may shed some light on the subject.
When Hillary took over as athletic director in 1984, it was his second coming. He first came to Cistercian when SMU teammate Mike Bulger suggested his name to Athletic Director Bob Cahill in the late seventies. Hillary coached varsity basketball for the 1979-80 school year. It was enough for Hillary to understand the dynamics of the school — academics reign supreme. This understanding may have discouraged him from returning, despite repeated requests from then Headmaster Fr. Bernard.
“I was unsuccessful for three years, so I gave up on him,” recalled Fr. Bernard. “Then, at his own initiative, he called me in 1984 and told me that he was ready, but wanted to join us full time, and asked if I had a job for him.”
This time Hillary had come to terms with Cistercian’s emphasis on academics. He also was prepared personally, professionally and spiritually to commit himself fully to the boys.
“He told us in the Spring of 1984 that his decision to come to Cistercian was based on a good deal of prayer,” said Matt Walter ’86, Cistercian’s director of development and head JV football coach. “Coach was a man of faith and it guided him throughout. It was steadfast, but not flamboyant.”
Instead of resuming his previous duties as varsity basketball coach, Hillary opted instead to take on the duties of athletic director and varsity football coach. He dove into the business of shaping young men and never looked back. His level of commitment to the boys and to the school exceeded all expectations.
“I had no set time-table for him, but, as with all my hirings, I expected for him to ‘last forever.’” said Fr. Bernard. “He showed me proof of such intentions by always being the very first to return the signed contract for the following year. He would not even look at the page where the salary was indicated; he just grabbed a pen, signed the document, gave it back to me and said that it was not the money he was working for.”
Fr. Abbot appreciated Coach Hillary’s sense of the role of athletics at the school. “He knew how important academics are at Cistercian and he could not imagine his goals without those. He appreciated the support he received, the kind of boys we have, and the peacefully established place football has among the school’s programs.”
“Cistercian was his family,” insisted Sheila Hillary. “He loved the boys, the parents, the faculty, and especially Fr. Bernard and Fr. Peter.”
David Patrick said, “I know he received offers that on paper were better — bigger programs, more money — but he loved being a part of the Cistercian family, and I don’t think he would have left it. He was like the priests and so many of the lay faculty that stay for so long who make Cistercian such an amazing place and make it difficult for people outside to really understand just how special Cistercian is.”
“He wasn’t about playing checkers with jobs,” added Jay McAuley, head football coach at St. Mark’s. “He was about building something he could be proud of down the road.”
“He loved the kind of kids that come through Cistercian,” said McAuley, “more than anyone could ever know. He would talk about guys he coached ten years ago, about how they turned out to be great people.”
While remarkably humble when it came to his and his team’s athletic achievements, Coach once allowed himself to brag a little on the academic accomplishments of the seniors from the 1985 team. In August 1986, Harless Wade wrote in The Dallas Morning News: “Tom Hillary of Cistercian doubts any coach in America can match the marks of nine seniors who started for the Irving prep school last fall. They have been accepted to: Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Holy Cross, U.S. Military Academy, U.S. Naval Academy, Boston College, Amherst and Austin College.”
He enjoyed relationships with all Cistercian students, not just the athletes. He was the antithesis of the archetypal football coach who has time only for those who can help him win football games on Friday nights. Though not gregarious, he befriended all students at the school, whether in the classroom, in PE, or in the lunchroom where he welcomed students who arrived early.
“His presence alone in the halls at school made a difference in the way people acted and carried themselves,” said Jack Pritchett ’93.
The art of recruiting athletes — a necessity for most coaches — never entered into Coach’s routine. Tim Rogers ’88, recalled in his Mr. Funny Guy column in the Dallas Observer, “He put serious pressure on me to play football. Like, he would pass me in the halls at school and say things such as, ‘Hi.’ I remember one time he said, ‘How are you doing, Tim?’”
Coach Hillary’s loyalty was not reserved only for the boys, the school, and football. Participation in all sports ballooned during his tenure (see box on page 8), and he sought to accommodate everyone. He upgraded other sports that traditionally ran a distant second to football. In 1987, he established Cistercian’s first ever varsity baseball team and coached it for several years. Then he handed over these duties to his assistant coaches to give them a chance to shine (and to earn a little extra income). His loyalty to the school — from its boys to its principles — lifted everyone.

“Tom is my guardian angel put here to enrich my life and make my life better,” Sheila Hillary was telling Fr. Peter when Coach passed away from adult acute myeloid leukemia (AML) on Monday, April 10. He had been diagnosed just over two weeks earlier, as spring break began. Now, on the first day back from break, word was spreading around the school that Fr. Peter had left campus. Everyone seemed to understand what that meant.
“It was strange, so sudden, so unexpected,” said Wyatt Maxwell. “I suppose we dealt with it pretty badly. Apparently the little guys — his PE class — were hit very hard, and I would bet the rising seniors were too. I can’t imagine knowing you’re not going to be coached by Coach Hillary. It was the ultimate in reaching the top, being a senior under Coach. It’s what seventh graders dream about.”
“We were already thinking about coming back the next year and shooting the bull with Coach after practice when the team runs, the traditional thing that the graduated class does. We wouldn’t get to do that. We were sad, we had classes, but nothing was accomplished. We learned that the best way to deal with it was to talk about him, all the stories.”
Coach would never have expected the scene at the Cistercian Gymnasium on April 13, 2000. Over 1,200 crowded into the gym to pay their respects to a man who never appeared particularly impressed with his own value.
For this, the largest Mass ever at Cistercian, the community of Cistercian Fathers concelebrated the service, with Fr. Abbot the main celebrant. “The gym beautifully transformed into a sanctuary,” Fr. Bernard recalled. A six-foot-tall crucifix was hung in place of the image of the Hawk. The altar was set on a raised platform directly in front of the crucifix. Pictures of Coach Hillary were displayed, including one beside the lectern. “It was absolutely fitting that he should be commemorated ‘in his house,’” Fr. Bernard commented.
Players, parents, faculty, old teammates, fellow coaches, family, and friends came to celebrate the stories of leadership, love, caring, humility, inspiration, and sportsmanship. They remained for hours at the reception. They wanted to share stories about this man who had impacted so many, yet never acknowledged his own significance.
In August of 1985, each Hawk was sitting glumly in the locker room preparing to take the field for a scrimmage against a much stronger 3-A Coppell team. When a football player contemplates his manhood in moments like these, nothing else seems to matter. Coach Hillary understood the depth of the doubts this day. He broke the silence with a tale from his playing days. This was a rare occasion.
He recalled sitting in the locker room before a night game at the Cotton Bowl his senior year. The Mustangs were preparing to face the number-one ranked team in the nation, Roger Staubach’s Navy squad. Across the country, fans and journalists snickered, “SM Who?” Coach Hillary recalled how the players didn’t care what anyone else thought, they felt they could win the ballgame. They believed in themselves and although Navy was bigger, faster, stronger, and more talented, SMU went out and won the game that evening, 32-28.
Coach Hillary’s tale gave the Hawks the courage to give everything they had in their contest against Coppell. But it was a week later at the annual pool party, that the full impact of this Hillary moment emerged. David Patrick recalled some of the boys were paging through Coach Bulger’s SMU yearbooks. There in the 1964 edition, they found an account of that game against Navy. Sure enough, just like Coach said, SMU had defeated the Naval Academy at the Cotton Bowl that year. He had, however, failed to mention that a tight end named Tom Hillary scored a crucial touchdown with just five seconds left in the first half.
Frequently, Tom Hillary’s most powerful lessons came in the words he left unspoken. His players have learned this lesson well. In recounting the many great moments under Coach Hillary, they rarely focused on their play or the work of a specific player. Instead, they emphasized the players’ desire, the feelings before and after, their love for making their coach proud.
“This may sound strange but I recall very little of what actually occurred on the field during our greatest victories,” said Captain Jeremy Gregg ’97, a captain of the ’96 team. “For me, those memories are based much more on what was going on inside me than on what was around me. I relive the feeling of having something great drawn out of me, of being part of something much larger than a simple high school football game. Coach Hillary elevated the game from a simple athletic contest to a struggle for greatness.”
Coach Hillary’s own struggle for greatness took a surprising turn in the spring of 1998. At Mass one morning, the lifelong Methodist joined the communion line. Everyone was startled. Had he forgotten that only Catholics may receive Holy Communion? Hardly.
Coach and his wife Sheila, who was raised a Catholic in England, had been attending Methodist services in downtown Dallas. They had begun searching for something different and found it in St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Coppell. They enrolled in catechism classes together and became very happy in their new faith.
Cistercian may have played a role in easing Coach’s transition to Catholicism. Although Coach did not discuss personal matters, it was apparent that he enjoyed becoming more involved in the school’s religious activities. He had always been quietly spiritual. Now he could enjoy sharing with the boys another aspect of their lives.

“I believe this year was very fulfilling for Tom at work and at home,” said Sheila Hillary. “He was very content. He was comfortable with the program, his coaching staff, he felt very happy with the way his football team had performed for the past five years. And he was very happy at home.”
“He even began to understand just how much his step-children adored him,” she said. “We were very happy in our faith. His spiritual life was really wonderful.”
At Cistercian, years of hard work were paying dividends. The school’s reputation in athletics began approaching its lofty record in academics. “You hear it all the time,” said Steve McCarthy, Cistercian’s new varsity football coach. “Cistercian teams play with class.”
That reputation was validated when Coach Hillary was named one of the two head coaches for the first annual DFW All-Star Classic (see box, page 9). “He never talked about it,” said Wyatt Maxwell, “but it must have made him happy.”
It also would have made him happy had he been able to listen in as Fr. Peter discussed the school’s athletic programs. Fr. Peter told prospective Form I parents in January, “Referees and parents from opposing teams regularly praise the sportsmanship of Cistercian athletes under Coach Hillary.” He added that Hillary’s teams play with class. “‘Class’ means playing smart, playing tough, and playing with exemplary sportsmanship. Coach Hillary does not tolerate cursing or fighting from his players.”
The program had come a long way in his 16 years. That much struck David Patrick, now an actor in Los Angeles, on a visit to the school this past September.
“The weight room, locker rooms, and other facilities were amazing,” he said. “but the boys impressed me the most. They showed so much heart and class in their play and the way they carried themselves. While watching the game tapes they demonstrated more knowledge of the game than many of my teammates and I had. It was clear that what Coach Hillary had started to build while I was there had grown into something very special.”
That something special was showcased on October 8, 1999, in a contest against crosstown rival Greenhill. Never had the Hornets appeared more invincible. Undefeated and ranked number three among the area’s private school teams, Greenhill ran a no-huddle offense that was thrashing opponents. The Hornet quarterback told the Morning News, “I really don’t think we can be stopped.” The Hawks limped into the match with just one win under their belt against three losses.
“Of the four years I played for Coach,” Wyatt Maxwell said, “that week before Greenhill was the hardest week of practice ever.”
“Coach told us it would be the toughest game we would play, and he told us the odds weren’t in our favor,” remembered Maxwell. “But he told us if we played with heart, if we played every minute, all out, leaving it all out on the field, the best game of our lives, we could win. He said they were good, but he also said they were beatable. He was right on both accounts.”
As the tide began to turn and the Hawks grounded the Hornets’ high-flying attack, frustration began to set in on the far sideline. It was a different story on the Cistercian side, even as the outcome still hung in the balance.
“You looked at our sideline,” Maxwell said, “and you saw a man who you took pride in. He was intimidating, but silently so; he kept his cool.” With just two minutes to go, the Hawks scored to pull off an unlikely 20-17 win.
“I cannot describe the incredible feeling. We cried, Coach cried, our fans and parents cried. Coach told us he doesn’t rank games but he said that this game was one of the best, if not the best. It was up in the air, literally until the last second, and everyone, me, my buds, my dad, and coaches still get goose bumps.
“And Coach told us to enjoy it. When we sang our [victory] song that night in the locker room, with Coach there, it was the pinnacle of good times. We sang so loud, so proud that we sang it twice.
“Coach was so happy.”