Bob McCully coached the Falmouth High School boys tennis team for 53 years, until stepping down this spring due to health concerns. Derek Davis/Portland Press Herald

Bob McCully would rather still be coaching the Falmouth High boys tennis team instead of sitting here in his kitchen talking about it. But his health makes that impossible. Low blood pressure affects McCully’s balance and leaves him pretty much homebound except for doctor and physical therapist appointments.

“I’d like to be able to but I can’t,” said McCully, who will celebrate his 85th birthday in June. “I looked forward to seeing the team each year. I wanted one more season. … I just enjoyed it.”

Instead he’s looking back at a coaching career that lasted an incredible 53 years. Think about that. Fifty-three years. More than a half-century of Falmouth boys tennis players had the same coach. McCully coached generations.

One thing is certain. Nobody does anything for 53 years unless they love it and are good at it. Why else do it?

“It isn’t the pay,” McCully said, answering with a one-liner.

With McCully as head coach, Falmouth boys tennis won 623 matches and lost just 167, winning 79% of the time. He had one .500 season, going 7-7 in 2022, and never had a losing season. McCully’s last two teams went undefeated, winning back-to-back Class A state championships. He coached four state singles champions: Brian Patterson (1992, 1995), Brendan McCarthy (2014), Nick Forester (2018, 2019) and Xander Barber (2023). Both teams in last season’s state doubles final were from Falmouth. A lot of talented players came through the program, but he noted that last season he had 21 athletes take part in a varsity match.

With many players over the years dedicated to year-round tennis, McCully knew gearing things with his team toward individual glory wouldn’t cut it. The talent would establish itself, but in the team framework.

“My job was to make them realize they’re on a team and to be supporting each other,” McCully said.

It’s as if Falmouth High grew around him, from an enrollment around 350 students to around 670 now. The Maine Principals’ Association broke tennis into classes based on enrollment in 1986. Under McCully, Falmouth won seven state titles in Class A, including the last two, four in Class B and three in Class C. McCully’s teams went undefeated 12 times since 1995. Was there pressure to win at a school like Falmouth, where championships are baked into the culture? Not external pressure, McCully said. His success helped create that winning culture.

“I’d put it on myself. I’m competitive,” he said.

The list of Maine high school coaches who even approached 50 years is short. IJ Pinkham, who died last week, coached basketball for 49 years, the final 43 at Boothbay. Mike Siviski was head football coach at Winslow for 35 years before retiring in 2020. Dave Halligan, McCully’s peer at Falmouth, just completed his 39th season coaching boys basketball at the school, winning another state championship. Halligan has also coached boys soccer at Falmouth for 46 seasons, and his combined win total in the two sports is over 1,000.

Bob McCully points to a framed photograph of the 1995 Maine state championship team that he coached. He is pictured back center. Derek Davis/Portland Press Herald

Jamie Hilton, McCully’s successor at Falmouth, has coached with both McCully and Halligan for years.

“They’re both very knowledgeable and very thorough,” Hilton said. “They know how to get (athletes) motivated.”

With all the background static that high school coaches deal with, mostly parents and athletes grumbling about playing time or strategy, Hilton thinks McCully and Halligan’s longevity is their superpower.

“Because they’re established, people don’t want to bother them,” he said.

A native of Little Falls, New York, basketball was McCully’s first sports love. As a 6-foot-9, back-to-the-basket center at St. Bonaventure University, McCully averaged 16 points and 10.2 rebounds as a senior in the 1961-62 season. He was selected by the Syracuse Nationals (now the Philadelphia 76ers) in the fourth round of the 1962 NBA draft, the 32nd player selected overall and 23 picks after the Boston Celtics took John Havlicek.

Instead of the NBA, which was hardly a sure thing in the early ’60s, McCully chose graduate school and a career in education. We can be sure Cooper Flagg did not have the same internal debate before deciding to leave Duke and enter the NBA draft.

Bob McCully reflects on his 53 years of coaching tennis. Derek Davis/Portland Press Herald

McCully started to love tennis in his 20s while in grad school at the University of New Hampshire. After a few years coaching and teaching back at St. Bonaventure, he moved to Maine, taking over the Falmouth tennis job and teaching math.

The student-athletes didn’t change much over 53 years. Technology and training methods certainly did, but a teenager in 1971 wasn’t much different from a teenager in 2024. One thing did change, McCully said. When he started, he would win matches against his players. Time took that off the table.

For many years, McCully compiled a yearbook of each season that included the Falmouth roster, match results, newspaper clippings about the team and a brief history of Falmouth boys tennis. The pile of homemade yearbooks doesn’t cover all 53 years, but does cover a lot of them.

Here’s hoping somebody involved in Falmouth boys tennis picks up that tradition. In losing McCully, whose tenure spanned 10 presidents, the Navigators aren’t just losing a coach. They’re losing their institutional memory. They’re losing their history, and that’s irreplaceable.