Coach Bill Merris ’56, who spent more than 40 years at IC as an athletic director, coach and professor, sat down with Central Illinois’s favorite local sports broadcaster Gary Scott and IC hall of famer Buford Green ’64 for a live Saturday morning broadcast on WLDS 1180.

“To say that Bill is a storyteller is understating it,” Green said during the program. “I have been chairman of the IC sports Hall of Fame committee and Bill has been our emcee for the event — he does a great job, but it got to the point where our final meeting we would determine how many stories Bill could tell.”

Merris did not disappoint alumni who tuned in to hear his unique style of storytelling. The stories told by the beloved IC coach reflect a time when athletics were still growing and becoming established at the College. For instance, Merris shared that he was called to step up to take over athletic programs in danger of being cut  several times over the years.

“I took track for a while,” Merris said. “The current coach left and the president at the time said IC couldn’t afford to hire a track coach and they thought of dropping the sport. I said, ‘No, I’ll take it.’” Merris is best known as the head coach of men’s basketball for 38 years — but he also coached football, baseball, track and field, women’s
basketball, tennis, and golf. Merris says when seasons overlapped in the sports he coached, he juggled the
practice and competition schedules and made it work with a little help from his friends in IC athletics.

Immediately after high school, Merris joined the air force and served as a teacher and an airborne radio operator. He was inspired to come to IC where he represented the Blueboys as an all-conference basketball and baseball player. He became a coach at IC in 1958. Green met Merris at Illinois College in the early 1960s when he played for Blueboys baseball. He went on to spend more than 40 years as a journalist at the Jacksonville Journal-Courier and State Journal-Register.

The hour and a half broadcast was peppered with memories of their shared time together at IC, notable sports moments and stories of the people who have made Illinois College athletics what it is today. Some notable names that came up in the broadcast include Charlie Bellatti ’49 H’98, Joe Brooks and Al Miller. The program also touched on some current events in the Jacksonville community.

“The absence of MacMurray is such a loss,” Merris said, reflecting on the spring announcement of MacMurray College’s permanent closing. “I hated seeing that. It’s been a great school.”

Merris recalls the legendary rivalry between the two colleges which always brought in big crowds and a lot of excitement and emotion, especially among the students. Since Merris’ time at Illinois College, the athletics program has expanded to serve a growing number of student-athletes. More than 500 student-athletes now compete in 23 varsity sports.

Merris had remained a regular fixture on the IC campus prior to the pandemic. In recent years, he has attended practices led by current Head Men’s Basketball Coach Steve Schweer, who joined the college in 2018. In Schweer’s first season at the helm of the program, the Blueboys had their best record in MWC play since 2013-14.

While records are often touted as the ultimate measure of success in coaching, when Merris talks about his career, he focuses mostly on the relationships he has developed. For many alumni, especially former student athletes, their friendship with Merris is one of the first things they think of when they think about IC athletics.

Scott ended the program by making sure the beloved coach knows how much he means to the community: “I think the true measure of anybody is the number of lives you touch. Bill, you have touched a whole bunch of lives and you have no idea the influence that you have had on all these students — thank you.”