Jack Murphy

Jack Murphy served as Taylorville Tornadoes boys' basketball coach from 1964 through 1968 and athletic director at Taylorville High School from 1964 until the end of the 1971 school year.    While coach of the Tornadoes, Murphy got to experience the "highs" and the "lows" of coaching high school basketball. His first two teams won regional championships and came up a game short of reaching the "Sweet Sixteen" each year losing to the "Runnin Reds" of Stephen Decatur. In the 196465 season, led by Hall of Fame members Bob Parker, and Ken Deck, along with Bob Fogler, team MVP Jon Corzine and junior Terry Passoni, Murphy's Tornadoes posted a 19 - 8 -record and brought home the first regional championship since 1959.    The following year, with Deck and Passoni joined by Al Vitali, Colby Martin, Phil Moss and Jim Cutler, Murphy coached the Tornadoes to a 22 and 6 record, his second Regional Tournament title, anti first back to back championships since 1956 and 1957. This Tornadoes team also won the Mid-State Conference and set a school record for points in a single game by scoring 122 points against 'Rochester ' in the Regional Tournament.    After two more seasons, Murphy stepped down as head coach to focus his attention on being the Athletic Director at THS.    In 1971 Jack Murphy decided to get back into coaching' basketball and left Taylorville for Pawnee, where he coached the Indians for 6 years and 88 victories. In his coaching career, he also coached boys teams at Minonk, Tremont and Pontiac amassing 421 wins. After retiring from coaching the boys team at Pontiac in 1988, Murphy again could not stay away from the sidelines, and accepted the head coaching position with the Pontiac girls varsity team in 1994. 109 wins later Jack Murphy finally retired from coaching basket-ball at the end of the 2001 season, having led his teams to a total of 530 victories and completing a career that saw him join Dolph Stanley and only two other coaches who coached in six decades Murphy was inducted into the Illinois Basketball Coach's Association Hall of Fame in 1985.