St. Mary's Springs legend watches milestone win from the fence after getting tossed in the third quarter.
Legendary Wisconsin high school football coach Bob Hyland of
St. Mary's Springs (Fond du Lac, Wis.) won his 500th career game Saturday. The historic night came with a bit of a twist, however, as he was ejected in the second half of a 35-7 win over Lomira.
St. Mary's Springs held a 35-0 lead late in the third quarter when officials began conferencing about a holding penalty, according to the
The Post-Crescent. Hyland took issue with the delay and was hit with a pair of unsportsmanlike penalties and ejected from the game.
"At the end of the game, when the officiating crew did what they did – they asked me to come out and make a call and then he throws a penalty on me, and a second one," Hyland told The Post-Crescent.
The rest of the game went without a hitch and St. Mary's Springs improved to 8-0. Hyland is the fourth coach in history to reach the 500-win milestone and the first in Wisconsin.
"When I started this journey, I was just hoping to win a game," Hyland told The Post-Crescent. "Took me almost two years to win a game. When we went 1-15-2 the first two years, you didn't look at anything down the road. You were just hoping to survive, win a few more games the next year and then it started and it's been a nice run."
After going 29-1 as a player at North Dakota State from 1967-69, Hyland began coaching at St. Mary's Springs in 1970.
The wins didn't come easy but by the late 1970s, the Ledgers were a regular in the state championship game. He won his first state title in 1983 with 16 more to follow, including a three-peat from 2017-19.
In the 52 years Hyland has been head coach, the Ledgers have lost only 113 total games — a little more than two per season. He told the Post-Crescent that he will retire once his grandson Brody wraps up his high school career in 2024.
