David Riley
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| Former school(s): Loyola Academy | ||||||
| Other leadership: IHSSBCA Chair (1998-2004) | ||||||
| IHSSBCA Hall of Fame (2011) | ||||||
David Riley (1956–2015) was the longtime Scholastic Bowl coach at Loyola Academy in Wilmette, Illinois. Formerly a librarian at the school, he had a virtually endless reserve of knowledge in the fields of literature, gourmet foods, Hungarian history, and classical music.
Coaching
Riley accrued an impressive win-loss record over his storied career, breaking 1000 victories before his retirement. In 1996, his Ramblers won their first IHSA Sectional title and advanced downstate, where they lost a gut-wrenching 210-158 decision to Notre Dame High School of Peoria on some very bad questions. They won their Sectional again in 2009, under the captainship of Jack Glerum, and finished 4th in Peoria that year. The Ramblers also almost went downstate in 2010, but lost on a circle-of-death tiebreaker by 3.3 pp20TUH.
Riley's teams also claimed at least four Regional titles in 2003, 2005, 2009, and 2010.
Riley also served as coach for Team Illinois from 2002 to 2007, leading the team to a second-place finish in his inaugural season. In 2005 and 2007, last-minute health issues forced him to stay at home and not travel with the team. Over his tenure, Team Illinois finished in second place once (2002), third place twice (2004 and 2005), and won the tournament championship in 2007. Though Riley did not travel with the team, he is at least partially responsible for the 2007 Team Illinois Travel Disaster. He reclaimed his role as Team Illinois coach, along with Mike Laudermith, at the first incarnation of the NASAT. Riley coached Team Illinois to a third-place finish after losing the tiebreaker game against South Carolina.
Prior to commonplace attendance of pyramidal national championships, Coach Riley took Loyola to a few NACs, but stopped doing so when other opportunities became available. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, he took his team to several PACE NSC's and more NAQT HSNCT's.
Among Riley's favorite coaching stories is the one about Loyola's historic victory over Wheaton North in the semifinals of the 2004 "Bulldog Classic" at Richards High School in Oak Lawn. It would turn out to be Wheaton North's only loss of the season en route to their third consecutive state title and a 95-1 record.
Early in his career, Riley rarely had reliable, long-term assistance in his coaching duties. In 2004, a former player, Matt Laird, returned to act as an assistant. Laird coached the team for five years, took two years off, returned again in 2010 to coach the frosh/soph team, then took over the team entirely beginning with the '11-'12 season as Riley retired for health reasons. The '12-'13 Loyola team, consisting of the last players directly coached by Mr. Riley, placed third at both national championships.
Amongst Riley's most famous coaching idiosyncrasies was to accuse his players of having "no sense of civilization" every time they miss something related to opera, old movies, or '60s girl groups. He was also fond of mentioning that "this would never happen in New York" in similar situations.
Riley the Reformer
Few Illinois coaches led a charge for change for as long as David Riley. For well over a decade, Riley railed against the entrenched establishment to make changes in Illinois Scholastic Bowl, including (but not limited to) improved questions, a greater reliance on pyramidality, changes in rules to open up the game to players, and give greater power to moderators to make the best call, instead of relying on outdated behavior-based rules which could only penalize better teams.
For a number of years, Riley was President of the IHSSBCA, from which he could help focus the conversation of reform in Illinois. He also served two terms on the IHSA Scholastic Bowl Advisory Board, where he acted to counsel the IHSA on reforming itself.
Riley was among the first coaches to host an NAQT event in Illinois, and was for a few years the tournament director for the NAQT State Tournament.
Riley also originated the Ultima tournament, which continues at Loyola. Through 2008, the Ultima was in the format of the Panasonic Academic Challenge and was intended to act as a gauge for potential Team Illinois players for the upcoming year. Due to the IHSSBCA's 2008 decision not to continue sponsorship of Team Illinois, Ultima began to run normal tournaments, mostly using housewrites during Riley's era. Participation had previously been strictly reserved for teams based on a Riley-invented points system which ranks teams based on the previous year's varsity and frosh-soph performance, but the tournament was eventually made open to all high school teams.
Legacy
Riley had been in slowly declining health since at least 2005. While health eventually forced him to step away form coaching, Riley continued to moderate until 2014. Riley passed away in late 2015. His former school, Loyola Academy, hosted a memorial mass in his honor, attended mostly by former players and representatives from the Illinois coaching family.
The Ultima Tournament now awards a traveling trophy named in his honor.
The Commonwealth of Kentucky named Riley an Honorary Kentucky Colonel, largely for his work in quizbowl.
Starting with its 2016 iteration, PACE renamed its annual coaches meeting in David's honor.
The IHSSBCA Kickoff tournaments are also named in his honor.
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