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.
