South Side soccer architect Bigelow dies
South Side's Coach Bob Bigelow during a game between South Side High School and Calhoun High School. (November 7, 2000) Credit: Richard Slattery
Bob Bigelow, who created a boys basketball powerhouse at South Side High in the 1970s, then turned to the formation of a girls soccer team that achieved national recognition, died Saturday at Mountainside Hospital in Montclair, N.J. He was 71.
Bigelow, who lived in Bayside, Queens, and Oahu, Hawaii, since he stopped coaching in 2001, had undergone a lung transplant in August and battled complications ever since, according to his daughter, Kimberly Organ of Port St. Lucie, Fla.
A physical education teacher in the Rockville Centre school district for 32 years -- he retired from the classroom in 1995 -- "Coach Bigs" guided the boys basketball team to four Nassau County championships -- in 1971, '72, '75 and '78 -- and finished with a 202-60 record in the sport between 1968 and 1982. In 1980, he started South Side's girls soccer program and won 330 games while losing 45 and tying 17 before his retirement after the 2001 season.
His soccer teams won 15 county and 15 Long Island titles and 10 state championships, though Bigelow claimed no previous background in the sport. "I played, and he came to my games," his younger daughter, Kathleen Fink of Baldwin, said in a telephone interview. "He never knew anything about it until watching me play. I'm just going to say that [becoming a soccer coach] was because he wanted to try a new adventure, a new challenge."
Members of the soccer community described Bigelow as a "tactician" who walked the sidelines with a small black notepad, jotting his thoughts during games. Before the final game he coached, in November 2001 when the team was unbeaten in 20 games and ranked No. 1 nationally, Bigelow said, "I told the seniors, 'I'm a senior now.' I don't think they figured it out."
Robert Leo Bigelow was born Sept. 27, 1939, in Adams, Mass., and attended New York University on a basketball scholarship when the school had one of the city's elite Division I programs. He was a reserve player on NYU's 1960 Final Four team that lost the national semifinal game to eventual champion Ohio State.
His daughters said that, in retirement, he enjoyed golf and world travel with his longtime partner, Sue Wallace. "He'd bring back gifts for my sister and me," his daughter Kimberly said. "Black pearls from Thailand, pearls from Australia." His marriage to Sandy Bigelow ended in divorce after 22 years.
Besides his daughters, Bigelow is survived by Wallace; two brothers, George of Windsor, Mass., and James of Adams, Mass.; a sister, Dorothy Russett of North Adams, Mass., and eight grandchildren.
Memorial services will be 2 p.m. Wednesday at Macken Mortuary, 52 Clinton Ave., Rockville Centre. His daughters requested, in lieu of flowers, that donations be sent to the Coach Bob Bigelow Fund at the funeral home, to set up a scholarship for a South Side athlete.
More High Schools
