You’d be hard-pressed to find a head coach who got more out of their players than George Bishields.
Bishields, the legendary Mount Savage coach, died on Friday at age 85.
As Indians head coach in boys soccer and boys basketball, as well as a brief stint as baseball head coach, Bishields coached over 900 games across three sports in three different decades. He won over 500 games and three state championships.
“I don’t know if anyone loved Mount Savage and wanted Mount Savage students, players and teams to be successful more than Coach Bishields did,” said Mike Mathews, a 1982 Mount Savage graduate who was one of the few players to play three sports under Bishields. “He was a fierce competitor who wanted to see his players succeed more than anything else.”
All in all, Bishields coached area athletes across six different decades.
After retiring in 1996, Bishields returned to the sidelines in 2000 as an assistant girls soccer coach under Martha Mauzy at Beall.
In his 13 years between Beall and Mountain Ridge as an assistant, those girls soccer teams had a 161-38-9 record with four undefeated regular seasons and were state semifinalists in 2009 and state runners-up in 2010.
“He was definitely a unique coach and person,” said Rocky Reed, a 1988 graduate of Mount Savage who spent a few years on Mauzy’s staff alongside Bishields. “If I could go back and do it again, there’s no one else I’d want to be coached by. He taught you how to be a man, to be the best you can be on the field and off the field.”
Bishields was also an assistant on Mauzy’s softball staff at Beall and Mountain Ridge, who went 219-50 across 13 seasons and won state titles in 2004, 2012 and 2013. Over the final three years, the Miners’ softball team went 64-1.
“It sounds cliche, but Coach Bishields had a relentless pursuit of perfection,” said Mo Pratt, a 1988 Mount Savage grad and current men’s and women’s head soccer coach at Allegany College of Maryland. “His ability to stay focused on big-picture things was second to none. I see it from coaches all the time. I see good, great coaches take a minute off, take a day off, take a practice off; but George never did that. He demanded hard work and he got it.”
Throwing in his brief stint as baseball coach at Mount Savage, Bishields’ total wins as a head coach and assistant is north of 900, with 890 wins coming in boys and girls soccer, boys basketball and softball.
The death of Bishields, the patriarch of Mount Savage athletics, came just over two years following the passing of Joanne Nickel, the matriarch of the Mount Savage athletic family.
Between Bishields and Nickel, there wasn’t much losing going on at the top of town in Mount Savage during the 70s, 80s and 90s. Nickel’s girls basketball teams went to the state tournament 10 times in addition to the 11 trips to the state tournament that the volleyball team made. Nickel won five state titles: 1977 in girls basketball and 1979, 1982, 1983 and 1997 in volleyball.
Every coach at any level is unique in their own right.
Bob Knight was known for his sideline antics. Bill Belichick was the wearer of a hoodie with the sleeves cut short who had no time for the media. Mike Tomlin is the guy players love to play for.
Then there’s Bishields.
Those who weren’t coached by Bishields, or sons or daughters of those coached by Bishields, probably saw Bishields as an ill-tempered man who would say anything that came to mind with no regard for who was in earshot.
While there may or may not be some truth to the latter — many of Bishields’ mannerisms aren’t family-friendly or fit for print — his sense of humor was second to none.
Multiple times, he was on the record telling soccer players, “You couldn’t cover a polar bear in a telephone booth.”
While redacting the name of the injured, Bishields once told his basketball players, “Go pick (him) up and carry him out of here. I don’t want him bleedin’ on my court.”
No matter what anyone from the outside might have thought of Bishields, he went down in the history books as a coach who always got more of out his kids than they thought possible, and a coach that would run through a brick wall for his players just as they would for him.
“The wins and championships, in multiple sports over so many years, are well-known and really difficult to believe,” Mathews said. Mathews played 10 total seasons under Bishields — four each in soccer and basketball and two in baseball — and also covered Bishields’ teams as a long-time sports reporter with the Times-News.
“But more important than that,” Mathews continued, “I think his legacy was teaching the value of hard work, preparation, sacrifice and dedication that not only improved a player’s athletic ability, but prepared each for the future with a mental toughness that is needed for success in life after high school.”
“People that weren’t under that Mount Savage umbrella would say, ‘How could you play for someone like him?’” said Reed, who played four years of soccer and three years of basketball under Bishields. “But there’s no one in the world I’d rather play for than him. He had that same care, desire and passion that I have in sports, which I think is a reflection of him.”
Bishields not only had the respect of his players, but also the respect of those who played against his teams.
“One word I think of when I think about playing against Mount Savage is respect,” said Joe Rowan, who along with his late brother Tim won over 450 games across 34 seasons as co-head coaches at Bishop Walsh. “You had to have respect for their program and respect for the way the kids played. They always played hard, and that was a big tribute to George.”
Bishields’ teaching and coaching careers in Allegany County began in 1961 when he was a junior high basketball coach at Cresaptown — his team went undefeated with 14 wins and featured Steve Vandenberg, who starred at Allegany and went on to play college ball at Duke.
Bishields went on to coach at Braddock when the school opened in 1965 before being the JV coach at Beall and Allegany.
In 1971, at 32 years old, Bishields was named boys soccer and boys basketball coach at Mount Savage, where he graduated in 1957 as a three-sport standout in soccer, basketball and baseball.
Legendary Beall head coach Ebbie Finzel had a hunch Bishields was destined for greatness, telling the Cumberland Times upon Bishields’ hiring, “He’s a dedicated worker and is always striving to increase his knowledge of the sport.”
Bishields had big shoes to fill, replacing Bob Kirk as boys basketball head coach after Kirk left to begin what was a legendary 33-year tenure as Allegany Community College men’s basketball head coach.
Bishields’ inaugural season as boys basketball coach ended at the state tournament with a loss in the semifinals — it was Bishields’ only basketball state tournament appearance in his 23 years as boys basketball head coach before the legendary Gene Paul succeeded him in 1994.
Bishields averaged double-digit wins in basketball from 1971 through the 1993-94 season, winning 249 games.
“I had debated about doing this last year,” Bishields said at the time of his retirement, “and I just felt it was time. I felt like I might have been burned out. Coaching (two sports, sometimes three) got to be a little too much. I just think I need a little time for myself now.”
Albeit a short span as Mount Savage baseball coach, Bishields’ Indians dubbed Mount Savage as Title Town during the 1978-79 school year by becoming the first Allegany County high school to win two state championships in different sports in the same school year, according to the Cumberland Times.
Bishields was head coach of the first of three baseball state titles won at Mount Savage when his Indians took an 11-inning thriller over Perryville, 3-2, in the 1979 Class C state title game.
After firing a four-hit shutout over Boonsboro in the state semis, Kevin Bittner started strong against Perryville with a scoreless first five frames before being touched for a pair of runs in the sixth.
Bishields brought in lefthanded fireballer George Dom in relief, who fanned 10 of the 14 batters he faced.
With the bases loaded in the top half of the 11th, Bittner drove in Dom on a single for the game-winning run.
As great a coach as Bishields was on the hardwood and the diamond, most would agree that he was a revolutionary of sorts on the soccer field.
“He was a soccer genius,” said Pratt, who, in addition to playing four years of soccer under Bishields, served as JV head coach and varsity assistant on Bishields’ soccer staff from 1991 through the 1995 season.
“The things he was doing, the Bishields system of play, it was decades ahead of its time,” Pratt continued. “So much of what I’ve learned over the years coaching, and what most coaches learn, stems from ‘Total Football,’ which was made famous by the Dutch. George’s style of play and his concepts almost matched that. He was teaching those things in the 70s and 80s, which was pre-internet and obviously pre-cell phone. I don’t know if he was going out of town to coaching clinics or picking that stuff up in magazines or what, but it just goes to show what a hard-working genius Coach Bishields was.”
“Tim and I used to say it seemed like their wingers had chalk on their feet because they stayed wide and ran up and down the sidelines all game long,” Rowan said. “The fullbacks would clear it wide all the time, and they always had someone there to collect the ball. If they got into set pieces or throw-ins, they were lethal.”
Rowan, a 1980 graduate at Valley, recalled never beating Mount Savage in soccer during his four years of high school. The Rowans took over as varsity co-head coaches at BW in 1985.
“Another thing those Mount Savage teams were great at was setting the tone,” Rowan said. “Tim and I had some good teams in the late 80s, and Savage had some good teams too. Those were always big crowds when we’d go up there. Bishields would send his kids out before the game and they’d be doing jumping jacks and were screaming the count, I mean screaming. It was very intimidating to go over there and play. You knew those kids were going to run forever and come out with all the 50/50 balls. I never once felt like Mount Savage played dirty — they just played good, physical soccer.”
Bishields’ Indians won nearly 80% of their games over 26 seasons from 1971 through 1996, finishing with a 261-76-19 overall record.
Mount Savage went five consecutive years with undefeated regular seasons in the 70s (1972-1976) and also had undefeated regular seasons in 1984 and 1989.
During Bishields’ tenure, the Indians won a whopping 16 Western Maryland Interscholastic League crowns, winning eight straight from 1971 through 1978 and eight more in a row from 1984 through 1991.
Bishields’ Indians won two Area championships in 1988 and 1989 — the Cumberland Times-News didn’t begin naming Area champs until 1988.
Bishields’ first state title came in 1978 when his booters beat Middletown, 1-0, for the Class C crown. Bobby Fuller scored the game’s lone goal with 10:47 to play off an assist from Mike Femi. The Indians finished with a 15-2 mark.
After falling in the 1986 Class C state title game, Bishields’ final state crown came in 1987 when the Indians shared the Class C title with Hereford after battling to a 1-1 tie. Reed scored Mount Savage’s lone goal.
Those were the only boys soccer state titles in Mount Savage history. The Indians were runners-up in 1986 and 1989 and semifinalists in 1977, 1985 and 1988, all under Bishields.
Bishields retired in 1996 after a 1-0 region playoff loss to Flintstone.
“I have tremendous respect for George Bishields,” Flintstone head coach Bob Rinker said after the game, whose Aggies won Area titles in 1996 and 1997. “He got more out of kids than anyone I’ve ever seen. I’ve told our kids that he could walk into a graveyard and get some people and beat you with them. He is one heck of a motivator and coach. He demands excellence, and he gets it.”
When Bishields retired, he was No. 2 in the state’s all-time soccer coaching victories list. There were only two schools at the time in all classifications — Oakland Mills and Middletown — that had made more state tournament appearances than Mount Savage’s seven. The Indians were the second smallest school with a soccer program in the state when Bishields retired.
“He was a coach, teacher, fan and friend,” Mathews said. “I was saddened to hear the news on Friday, but will always be grateful for the timeless lessons he taught us.”