Renowned Illinois high school swim coach Jim Runkle died on January 23rd at 12:20 AM. He was 79 years old.
Runkle was a native of Peoria, Illinois, and he spent most of his life in the region. He was a basketball player and cross country runner at Richwoods High School, but fell in love with swimming as a senior in high school after taking a water life-saving class. He then joined the swim team and water polo team at Western Illinois, and by his senior year, won an IIAC title in the 400 IM.
He began his coaching career at Glenbrook North High School in suburban Chicago. He took a two-year break to serve as director of swimming for the Springfield Park District and then spent seven more years at Glenbrook North.
In 1978, when Woodruff High School built a pool, Runkle returned home and took over the school’s new program – a huge building process after coming from a swimming hotbed in the Chicago suburbs where he had 250 swimmers in his age group program.
In a 2015 interview with the JournalStar, Runkle described the early years:
“I had come from a pretty good program at Glenbrook North,” he said. “We had 250 kids in our age-group program. It was almost like starting from ground zero here. That first year, we had 21 girls out and 14 of them couldn’t go the length of the pool and breathe correctly. I told my wife I wasn’t sure I’d done the right thing.”
His alma mater, Richwoods, was the local power and he spent most of the 1980s and 1990s building teams to chase them.
Runkle retired from Woodruff in 2002, and his last act at the school might have been his best. Giordon Pogioli, the best swimmer in school history, won a state title that season in the 100 breaststroke in 56.85 before going on to swim at Purdue and qualify for the 2008 US Olympic Trials.
“I remember that final season at Woodruff in 2002,” Pogioli said. “That was his last season. So there was kind of a lot of pressure because he’d never had an individual state title holder. I knew he was retiring. It was pretty special, the whole thing was an incredible story.”
It turned out that wasn’t his last year – he returned a year later when coach Tricia McDaniel became ill and stayed for five more seasons.
Runkle was given the 2009 Outstanding Service Award by NISCA for his contributions, and today his son Josh is the head coach at state power New Trier High School. His other son, Scott, is the aquatics and safety director for the Skokie Park District.
Woodruff High School closed in 2010 and reopened a year later as a career and vocational training center for the school district. That means no more athletic teams. Runkle’s legacy still lives on through an outpouring of memories on a Facebook page for school alumni and through interviews with his peer coaches done by the local news outlet The Journal Star.
His peers had a unanimous respect for their former competitor, remembering him as an incredible storyteller and someone who always had respect for his competition.
Absolute gentleman who cared about people beyond the pool. Incredibly nice to my family over the last 40 years. God speed.
Got to meet him back in high school when my coach Josh Runkle brought him over to talk to us a several years back during my season was sad to hear this happen but great man and our coach would never stop telling us stories about his dad and the things he did back in high school and even now after long graduating.
This is where the sport resides.
Absolute legend.