College Sports
Iconic Hall of Fame Essex High School coach dies at 83
Bill O’Neil, the gum-smacking legend at Essex High School known for his signature handlebar mustache who shied away from attention and had a natural way of deferring credit to others during a 44-year coaching career that saw the three Hornet programs he led collect a combined 24 Vermont state titles and nearly 1,300 wins, died on Saturday, April 26. He was 83.
“He was a great coach and everyone could see that, but I think he cared about all of his players as people first,” said Alexis (Perry) Davies, a 2012 Essex graduate who was the ace pitcher on O’Neil’s final softball championship team. “You were like his kids to him. You were his other family during the season.”
O’Neil, who died at the University of Vermont Medical Center, is survived by his wife and partner of 50 years, Mary, and nine of his children and nine grandchildren. O’Neil was predeceased by a son and grandson.
In his obituary, the O’Neil family expressed “their gratitude” to hospital staff. A funeral mass will be held for O’Neil at 12:30 p.m. Saturday, May 3, at St. Patrick’s Church in Fairfield.
Born on March 22, 1942 in Saranac Lake, New York, O’Neil went to Lake Placid schools before attending Norwich University in Northfield. After playing three sports and graduating from Norwich in 1965, O’Neil returned to his alma mater in New York, Northwood School, and taught and coached before becoming athletic director.
In 1973, Essex hired O’Neil as an English teacher and boys hockey coach. He spent the next 45 years in the classroom, retiring in 2018. O’Neil also coached two other sports at Essex — girls soccer and softball — for various lengths and with a great amount of success.
O’Neil’s boys hockey teams at Essex went 636-292-33 with 14 Division I state titles across 44 seasons. They won their first championship in 1981 and turned into the state’s best program alongside BFA-St. Albans. During his 37-year run with girls soccer, O’Neil compiled a 396-176-52 record with six championships. And the softball team racked up 261 wins against 124 defeats with four state crowns during O’Neil’s 22-year tenure.
In total, O’Neil amassed a career win-loss-tie mark of 1,293-592-85, which arguably makes him the winningest coach in Vermont high school sports history.
“It’s extremely impressive the way he did it too,” Davies said. “Not only did he coach three sports, he was a successful coach for all three sports and he was very well-respected coach, from players to parents to other teams.”
Always patrolling the sidelines with a stick of gum to chew, O’Neil found balance as a tough, but fair coach who found the best in his athletes.
“He knew how to keep it light-hearted but be serious with you when he had to be,” Davies said.
When he retired from coaching in 2017, O’Neil acknowledged assistant coaches, athletic directors and his players for a distinguished career that appears unmatched.
“You stick around long enough you should eventually win more than anybody else,” O’Neil said in 2017. “I’d like to think we won once in a while, but we had great kids and great people helping me.
“I’ve always had lots of help. I’ve never had to do it all by myself.”
That selflessness was apparent to Ed Hockenbury, who was the Essex AD from 1997-2014.
“It was never about Bill. He did it with zero ego and he worked as hard as he could every season,” said Hockenbury, now the AD at Norwich. “Winning was secondary. He was competitive and he wanted to try and win, but he understood what high school sports are supposed to be about.
“He did everything the right way.”
Justin Martin, a 1993 Essex graduate who starred on the boys hockey team and went on to play at the University of Vermont, said in a 2011 interview for a feature on O’Neil that his former coach provided the structure needed for players and students to thrive.
Today, Martin continues to use the “life lessons” he learned from O’Neil when he coaches. Martin also served on O’Neil’s staff in the early 2000s for a couple seasons.
“That’s the mark of a leader, it’s someone who can make everyone feel so important in their lives. That’s something that coach O’Neil did,” said Martin, head coach of Rice boys hockey. “And he did that if you were an athlete or not.
“He taught us all to have a plan and take pride in working hard at something.”
The national high school boys coach of the year in 2006, O’Neil became just the second Vermonter to be inducted into the National Federation High School (NFHS) Hall of Fame in 2018. O’Neil is also a member of the Vermont Principals’ Association (2016) and Norwich (1990) halls of fame. And in 2022, O’Neil was part of the ninth Vermont Sports Hall of Fame induction class.
In retirement, O’Neil volunteered as an assistant on Toby Ducolon’s BFA-St. Albans squad, the Hornets’ biggest rival.
“He’s the complete package for the high school experience,” Ducolon said about O’Neil in 2017.
Davies said what O’Neil “embodied was really rare.”
“I now have children and I hope they have a coach like Bill,” Davies said. “I hope there are more people out there like him. He was one of a kind.”
Contact Alex Abrami at aabrami@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter: @aabrami5.