Remembrances: Sports Success A Family Affair and Big Part of Paul Groot's DNA
State Champion Schaumburg Baseball Coach and Wheeling Star, From One of MSL's Most Prominent Athletic Families, Passes Away on Christmas Eve at 68
Sports were always a big part of the daily Groot family lineup card.
It was apropos that Paul was the cleanup man in the middle of the order of nine athletic-minded children of Howard and Patricia Groot. It is an impressive roster that ranks among the most prominent sports families from the Mid-Suburban League and northwest suburbs.
That included the amazing success Paul Groot had in 28 seasons of filling out 914 official lineup cards for the Schaumburg baseball program from 1985-2012. The 1974 Wheeling graduate produced a successful result with an MSL-record 611 of them and the biggest was a Class AA state championship in 1997 for the Illinois High School Baseball Coaches Association (IHSBCA) Hall of Famer.
Fittingly, not unlike the way his Saxons’ teams competed, Groot battled to overcome some significant health challenges in recent years before he passed away on Christmas Eve 2024 at age 68. In some respects it was a reflection of his final team that was around .500 and made a late-season run to the program’s fifth sectional title before falling to Grant in a 4A supersectional.
“We were never going to quit and coach Groot was never going to quit,” Matt Brancato, a Daily Herald All-Area pick, said after Groot’s last game. “The way coach Groot believed in us allowed us to believe in ourselves.”
No one saw it more on and off the field than longtime friend and assistant baseball and basketball coach Tom Mueller.
“He was always positive and just a tough guy,” Mueller said. “He was an extremely positive person and any challenge, he’d take head on and deal with it.”
Visitation for Paul Groot will be Friday, January 3 from 3 p.m.-8 p.m. at Kolssak Funeral Home, 189 S. Milwaukee Avenue (2 Blocks South of Dundee Road) in Wheeling. A life celebration will be held January 4 at 10 a.m. at the funeral home. Interment to follow at St. Michael the Archangel Cemetery, Palatine.
Formative Family Years of Success
Even though Fred Bencriscutto graduated from Wheeling three years ahead of Paul Groot in 1971 they formed a life-long friendship. High-level 16-inch softball, Sunday basketball at Buffalo Grove High School, flag football, bowling, golfing - they did it all after their high school and college days as they went into high school education and coaching careers.
And Bencriscutto, the longtime and successful head baseball coach at Dundee-Crown and a respected basketball official, had an up-close look at what the house of Howard and Patricia Groot was like.
“It was mayhem over there,” laughed Bencriscutto, who was in the same graduating class with Mike Groot. “They were all athletic and all competitive.”
Howard Groot was a three-sport athlete at Austin High School on Chicago’s far west side near Oak Park. The family tree would be like a sequoia in terms of athletic prowess as Paul and his older brothers Steve, Mike and Doug went to Wheeling. Younger brothers Scott (who passed away from brain cancer in 2019) and Craig and sisters Jackie, Debbie and Lori went to Buffalo Grove after it opened in 1973.
Steve - football, gymnastics and tennis
Mike - baseball and basketball at North Park College
Doug - football at North Park
Scott and Craig - standout quarterbacks who played against each other in college at Elmhurst and North Park
Jackie - basketball at North Park
Debbie - basketball and volleyball at North Park
Lori - basketball and volleyball
“The entire Groot household just loved athletics,” Bencriscutto said. “Mr. and Mrs. Groot didn’t miss a single game of any of their kids.
“It was just ingrained in Paul when you’re around it that much. There was a Sox game on the TV every night there. It becomes part of you and part of your makeup. He loved athletics and to think it translated into him being a good coach is a natural progression.”
Paul Groot was a man for all seasons at Wheeling. He was a receiver in football. He was a key player off the bench as a senior guard for Hall of Fame coach Ted Ecker’s basketball team that was 19-6, won a regional and both regular-season meetings over MSL breakthrough Elite Eight qualifier Hersey and future 13-year NBA veteran Dave Corzine.
But it was behind the dish in baseball where he truly excelled for head coach Ron DeBolt. Groot was part of teams that won an MSL North title his junior year and just missed another one his senior year and finished 15-6.
Groot was the catcher on the Herald’s 1974 All-Area team that included White Sox first-round draft pick and future big leaguer Larry Monroe from Forest View as the pitcher and future Cubs manager Mike Quade from Prospect as the shortstop. Wheeling teammate and multi-sport standout George Kaage, who played for three seasons in the Dodgers’ system, was the first baseman. Groot hit .348 with an MSL-record 19 RBI in league games (which was broken by future big-leaguer Mike Marshall of Buffalo Grove). Only three runners successfully stole a base against him.
He also was a teammate of future big-league outfielder George Vukovich of Arlington for the North division in the first Hal Sprehe MSL senior all-star game. Longtime Hersey assistant coach Kevin Kelley was a pitcher-outfielder for Prospect on the South team and also competed against Groot in American Legion baseball.
“He was a hell of an athlete,” Bencriscutto said.
“It was always fun coaching against him when I was at Lake Park and Hersey,” Kelley said. “Paul was a great player and a great coach. I have missed seeing him across the field.”
Groot earned the prestigious Evans Scholarship for golf caddies to Purdue and was a walk-on in baseball. He became the starting catcher at the end of his freshman year and as a senior hit .343 as a third-team all-Big Ten Conference selection. He had an opportunity to try out with the Detroit Tigers, but when he won Purdue’s Red Mackey Scholarship, he opted to pursue his plan of teaching and coaching by working on his master’s degree and serving as a graduate assistant coach for the baseball team.
Bencriscutto continued to see that competitive athletic fire on display. He recalled one time where the entire family made up the infield for a 16-inch softball team with Howard pitching, Paul catching and Scott, Craig, Steve and Mike from third to first.
Fred Van Iten, who was BG’s first baseball coach and one of Groot’s mentors, would open the gym for Sunday morning basketball games. They included Groot’s brothers and sisters, Van Iten, former basketball and football coach Rich Roberts and Mike Marshall.
“Once you tossed Paul the ball it never came back,” Bencriscutto joked. “You couldn’t guard the guy. He was a great basketball player.”
And sharing so many memorable times with his family carried over to his daughter Katie and her two children.
“Paul was a family man through and through,” Mueller said. “He loved his daughter and grandkids. He would call Katie after games and he was such a good father. The family was so close and family came first to him.”
Opposites Create Quite an Attraction
Tom Mueller and Paul Groot didn’t see eye-to-eye on everything. Mueller loves Notre Dame and the Cubs. Groot loved Purdue and the White Sox.
Mueller was not afraid to express his emotions from the first-base coaching box. Groot did so in a less-excitable manner down at third base.
“It was like a marriage,” Mueller said. “You couldn’t have gotten two more opposites to connect with each other. We both loved the game of baseball and loved teaching it. We were both catchers and I always thought catchers made the best coaches.”
Mueller was in the program as an underlevel coach and was promoted as Groot’s varsity assistant in 1987. Ten years later, when Schaumburg was preparing for the Elite Eight, Groot said “it’s scary how much we think a lot alike. We offset each other tremendously.”
En route to tremendous success for Schaumburg baseball:
1997 AA state champions
1989 AA state runner-up
2005 AA Elite Eight qualifier
5 sectional titles
13 regional titles
4 MSL championships
9 MSL division championships
2 30-win seasons
20 20-win seasons
But getting there wasn’t easy for a young coach taking over in the MSL after one year as a freshman B coach and three leading the sophomore program.
Fremd had made two Elite Eight trips in 1979 and 1984 under Terry Gellinger, Elk Grove made it under Larry Peddy in 1982 and Hoffman Estates got there in 1985 under Ray Gawron. DeBolt, his coach at Wheeling, Prospect’s Larry Pohlman and Rolling Meadows’ Al Otto and Buffalo Grove’s Van Iten and Bill Wurl had established successful programs that Groot’s good friend John Wendell was about to take over.
Oh, and there was Barrington, with one of the state’s most powerful and formidable programs under Kirby Smith and assistant and pitching coach Dave Engle.
Schaumburg went 9-17 in Groot’s first season but got on a roll late in his second season in 1986, won 20 games and reached a sectional final. Waiting for them was Barrington, which was on its way to a then state-record 65 homers and led by future Seattle Mariners’ all-star catcher and current manager Dan Wilson.
Groot would say his team didn’t belong on the same field with the Broncos as Wilson blasted one of 3 homers in a 9-1 victory. Few teams did as they rolled to the MSL’s first state baseball title and followed it up with consecutive runner-up finishes.
But the competitive bar was raised as the mutual respect between the two coaching staffs and programs grew significantly.
“It’s something from a long time ago, that year-in and year-out I wanted to be competitive and have a team to be reckoned with,” Groot said in 1997. “Barrington was so much ahead of us years ago and now we’re right with them.
“I have a lot of respect for Kirby. I’ve learned a lot from watching his teams and how he handles his kids. We used to be intimidated by them. We certainly aren’t anymore.”
Schaumburg would finally join the elite in 1989 when it suffered a heartbreaking 3-2 loss in 8 innings to Harrisburg in the state championship game in Springfield. Eight years later in 1997, his best team led by future pro pitchers Mike and T.J. Nall, state tourney MVP Mark Belousek, Tim Chambers, Josh Dryden, Paul Reuer, Brian Wojtanowski, John Komacki, Kevin Gleeson and Mike Weel beat Barrington on its home field 8-1 in the sectional championship to return to the Elite Eight at Geneva’s Elfstrom Stadium.
It appeared Schaumburg would cruise to the title. Mike Nall allowed only a seventh-inning leadoff walk in a 3-0 quarterfinal no-hitter of Clemente. Belousek shut down Rock Island in an 11-1 semifinal win in 5 innings. And the game plan was working to perfection as the duo of Nall and Belousek, under the tournament pitching rules of that time, were a strike away from combining on the title-game victory with a 3-run lead over Lockport.
Lockport then struck back with a tying 3-run homer off the scoreboard. The game continued into the bottom of the ninth when Schaumburg got a two-out rally going and Wojtanowski delivered the title-winning RBI single in a 5-4 victory.
It was a testament to Groot’s approach to the game.
“One of the things that impressed me as his assistant is he rarely would lose it altogether,” Mueller said. “He’d assess the situation, say here’s what you’ve got to do and how you’ve got to improve it. I wore my emotions on my sleeve and he was the thinker. When I would go off the rails he’d pull me back in.”
But they both thought alike in how players should respect the game and the opposition. They were sticklers for details and Mueller said they would go through situations in practice ad nauseum.
“He was a true teacher of the game,” Mueller said.
Pitchers were expected to maintain their composure even if things weren’t going their way as Groot would use one of his favorite phrases from the dugout to the mound, “come on big man get us in here.”
“Those two together made baseball fun,” said Adam Smith, who started at second base for Groot in 1994 and is at Benedictine University in a successful college coaching career. “It was fun to go to practice every day and you felt like you were going to learn. They were great people to play for.”
There were some tremendous players that included the Nalls, Reuer, Steve Hartsburg, Chuck Abbott, Trey Johnston, Dominck D’Agata, Grant Monroe from the 2005 Elite Eight team, John Hummel on the 2002 supersectional team that won 30 games and many others.
But a focus that wasn’t on just the most talented players underscored the program’s three decades of success.
“He worked hard with the kids, even the ones who weren’t starters,” Mueller said. “Every kid was important to our team. He wasn’t in it for himself. He was in it for the kids and wanted the kids to be successful.”
Assistant coaches that included Mueller, Bob Cosentino and Todd Meador received some valuable lessons along the way, too.
“He never took the game home with him,” Mueller said. “It was done. It was over and that’s one of the things I learned from him. He told me the kids aren’t doing it to you. They’re kids.”
His final group of them in 2012 gave him one memorable last ride that included his 600th win at Rolling Meadows. It was part of a second-half surge that came up one game short of a third state trophy.
“I’ve loved every minute of it here,” Groot said after that 3-2 victory. “We’ve had great support from the community, the coaching staff, the parents and the administration. We’ve had a lot of great players through the years.
“I’ve had 28 teams and every one of them is special to me. I’ll remember this group because they’re a bunch of kids who play with a lot of heart and that’s all you can ask for as a coach.”
A Lasting Legacy
Wally Brownley, who was a junior reserve on the 1997 state championship team, was at the Bears’ Thursday night loss at Solider Field to the Seahawks with his brothers when they got the news of Groot’s passing. They reminisced about what he called “some great Grooter stories.”
Brownley followed in Groot’s footsteps and will be entering his seventh season as a head coach at Hersey this spring.
“He was one of the best game managers I ever knew,” Brownley said. “He put people in spots to succeed. He will be sorely missed.”
T.J. Nall just led West Chicago to one of its most successful seasons with 17 wins and a second-place finish in the Upstate Eight Conference. Todd Meador, an assistant on the 1997 state champions, was a head coach at Hoffman from 2000-16 to with a school-record 23-win season and a regional title. John Hummel, who pitched professionally, teaches and coaches at Chatham Glenwood Middle School outside of Springfield and has won two Illinois Elementary School Association state titles.
“The greatest coach I ever had,” Hummel said on Facebook. “He believed in me. He gave me the opportunity to succeed. He taught me how to compete. He challenged me. He supported me. Thank you for everything coach.”
Adam Smith was on Bob Williams’ basketball staff when Schaumburg won the state title in 2001 but went the college route for coaching baseball. He spent 10 years as an assistant at his alma mater Carthage and then Concordia in River Forest.
Smith led Concordia for five years before moving to Benedictine in Lisle and has a 368-181 record. Last year’s team was his fifth in 14 years as a head coach to win a Northern Athletic Collegiate Conference title and go to the NCAA Division III regionals.
“Coach (Groot) was one of a kind. He built relationships with his players and was just a great man,” Smith said. “All his players loved playing for him. He was no-nonsense but he knew how to have fun. He let his players play.
“His expectations were very high for everybody and he let that be known. He had a huge influence in me becoming a coach and he wanted me to be a coach. I’ve tried to be like him.”
After Bencriscutto got the head coaching job at Dundee-Crown in 1991 he would talk with his old friend about building a program. In his 18 years in charge of the Chargers they won 309 games, six Fox Valley Conference and four regional titles and made two Class AA Elite Eight trips in 2001 and 2007.
Their teams typically played each other early in the season and often ran up against each other in the postseason. And their coaching paths crossed again after retirement when Groot had a stint for a few years as an assistant for Dan Colucci at Lake Park and Bencriscutto was helping Don Sutherland at Cary-Grove.
“When I started, I remember going over to Schaumburg and sitting with Paul in his office a couple of times,” Bencriscutto said. “I would pick his brain about what they were doing over there and what made them successful.
“If you were a coach and you were at all interested in improving your program you needed to look at what they were doing. I was lucky because he didn’t have to do that. I spent a lot of time with Paul and we talked sports and ball all the time.”
Many of Groot’s coaching peers paid tribute either on social media or through messages after they heard the news like Prospect’s Ross Giusti, Buffalo Grove’s John Wendell, former St. Viator coach Mike Manno, Rolling Meadows’ Jim Lindeman, Palatine’s Paul Belo and Fremd’s Chris Piggott.
Messages of how much they enjoyed being around and competing against Paul Groot. And how much he will be missed.
“For me and my wife (Claudia) we grew up with the Groots,” Bencriscutto said. “He wasn’t just a great baseball coach but he was a really close friend. I can’t tell you how much time we spent with those guys. Our families grew up together so it’s a loss on a different level.”
A big one because Paul Groot won so much more than he lost throughout his life.
Thanks for sharing Marty. Paul was an engaging young man. Always enjoyed his company.