When I saw the letter in a Facebook post last week, one of my first reactions was this: At last, Rocky Hill is what I thought he was.
A Hall of Famer.
Goodness, if for no other reason than those beautiful purple suits.
Ahh, yes. But there are a lot more reasons that Hill deserves to be enshrined Nov. 2 in the Thornton Hall of Fame.
During a stretch from 1994-97, he coached three teams to appearances at the state finals. Twice the Wildcats finished second and once they finished third.
Before that, Hill was an assistant at Thornridge for 11 years. He went from there to Thornton, where he compiled a 90-11 record over four seasons on the sophomore level. When Hill was named the varsity head coach in 1994, he had a 59-game winning streak.
In November, Hill will start his fifth season as the head coach at Thornridge.
Talk about staying power. Talk about loyalty to District 205.
Rocky said he feels a deep satisfaction to being recognized for all time in the Thornton Hall of Fame.
“It more or less legitimizes what we accomplished at Thornton,” Hill said. “It showed we did something really special.
“The thing I’m most happy about is I’m walking into the Thornton Hall of Fame and I’m still coaching.”
Hill and I talked about myriad things on Monday. So let’s just skip around a bit.
Let’s start with those suits. Nobody dressed better than Rocky.
“That happened when I got to Thornton,” Hill said. “They told me, ‘If you want to go to the top, stop wearing sweat clothes and put on a shirt, tie and a jacket. If you do that, you will go up in the ranks.’”
But there was more to Rocky Hill than style, according to Napoleon Harris, a former Thornton and NFL player and a current member of the Illinois State Senate.
“He was tough and he demanded the best from you,” Harris said of Hill. “He was a perfectionist. He put a lot of energy into it and was genuine and caring.
“He absolutely belongs in the Hall of Fame. I would say, ‘What took so long?’ I think coach Hill is definitely a first ballot Hall of Famer.”
After Hill was dismissed as the coach at Thornton in 2003, he remained at the school as a dean. He coached at Julian for one season and had a head-to-head meeting with the Wildcats in the 2005 Class 4A regional finals.
It didn’t go well.
“Can you imagine this?” Hill said. “I’m still a dean at Thornton. We play Thornton for the regional championship at Julian in front of a packed house.
“All those guys I had (the year before) beat us. And I had to go to work the next Monday and walk in that building.”
It almost pushed the three losses to Peoria Manual in three state appearances out as his No. 1 nightmare.
But not quite.
“Oh, I wake up with that every day,” Hill said. “The first time we played was the last IHSA state final game played at Assembly Hall. In the last game (in Peoria) we were up 18-4, and their little guards came off the bench and killed us. I just wish we could have won one of those games.”
Hill had a successful four-year run at Crete-Monee. The Warriors won three regional titles and a conference title for the first time since the mid-1980s. In 2010, Hill was let go as coach after his dean’s position was eliminated.
The result? A return to Thornridge, where he coached the sophomores for four years before being named the head coach in 2014. Hill, now retired as a dean, also is employed as a full-time substitute teacher.
“I believe firmly that God takes us through things sometimes we think are devastating,” Hill said. “But he’s actually taking us through that to set us up with something else.
“When I got riffed at Crete, I thought that was the end. But he was actually setting me up for this. There is not a day that goes by I don’t relish that God has taken me full circle.”
On Nov. 2, Hill’s voice mail greeting that ends with “have a blessed day” will never ring more true.
