The Moral Compass of the School
Jack Plunkett coached football at Chestnut Hill Academy for 24 seasons as head coach (through 2004) and another five as an assistant under his successor Rick Knox, his former player and a 1992 CHA graduate. He died of a heart attack on January 12, 2010. The tributes that poured in for him in the weeks after his death sounded less like the eulogies for a high school football coach and more like the memorials written for a small town's long-serving schoolteacher, moral leader, and favorite umpire — all in one person.
Jack was not only CHA football, but from the outpouring of support from our community it is clear that he is in many ways CHA itself. He was a tremendous coach, who brought CHA football out of some very tough years in the early 1980s to be the class in every way of the Independence League. He did this by deeply caring for his players like they were his own children and inspiring them to succeed. Most importantly, he taught them how to be upstanding men along the way.
Knox took over from Plunkett in 2005 but kept him on staff as an assistant for the five seasons that followed. "Not a day, practice, game, or season will go by without his memory and impact being felt in and around our program," Knox wrote after his mentor's death. "He will continue to inspire and motivate our team as we strive to be a program that would make him proud."
From Mansfield Linebacker to Independence League Standard
Plunkett had played college football at Mansfield University from 1971 through 1974, where he was a defensive captain and starting linebacker. His college teammate Mark Turner remembered him as "a relentless high motor linebacker that just never quit" — a guy whose teams didn't always win but whose teammates always came away better players and better people.
When he got to CHA in the early 1970s as an assistant to Bill Gallagher (who later became the football coach at Episcopal Academy), Plunkett learned the Independence League teaching-school approach. By the time he took over as head coach in 1981, CHA football was in one of its periodic down stretches. Over the next 24 seasons, Plunkett rebuilt it.
An Educator Who Clenched His Fist Instead of Yelling
Brad Wilson, who covered Plunkett's CHA teams as a sportswriter from 1987 through 2002, wrote the most telling story about him after his death — the story of the late-1990s CHA punter who fumbled a snap in a close, crucial fourth-quarter moment.
