Coach Dick Tighe

I just always thought it was best to keep things simple

Patrolling the sidelines on Friday nights is the part of high school coaching that everyone gets to see. But the preparation from Saturday to Thursday and the countless hours of practice and film sessions don’t come with the lights and cheers though. This week’s Moonlighter has easily put in far more than 10,000 hours just getting ready for Friday nights, not including all of the time in the offseason. In his 60+ years as a high school football coach, Dick Tighe has seen just about everything. And he remembers just about all of it. This week Tim and Tom get to sit down with their former coach to hear about one of the winningest high school football coaching careers in history. 

Coach Tighe grew up in the small town of Homer, Nebraska. From there he made his way to Wayne State University before transferring to Notre Dame. While a student at Notre Dame, he watched practices under Frank Leahy and got his own start coaching fellow students and learning the ropes as a future PE teacher. After serving in the Army, he was offered his first position as a teacher and coach at a Catholic High School in Canada. Over the next six decades, Tighe coached at Saint Edmond, Carroll Kuemper, Webster City, Iowa Falls, and Saint Edmond again. In total, Coach Tighe had 432 victories as a head coach, which currently stands as the most in Iowa and among the top 10 in the United States. Tighe’s winning percentage in 63 years was almost 72%. 

In over 6 decades, thousands of players have called Dick Tighe ‘Coach’. His memory of players, games, key plays, and most impressively, where his players are now is amazing. Tim and Tom could have asked questions and listened to stories for hours and hours. His perspective on coaching and some of the changes that have taken place since the 1950s is a sort of wisdom that you just don’t come by twice.

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