Longtime Hersey High School sports fixture mourned

Hersey High School will mourn a major loss on Friday.

A visitation for Carol Gresens will be held at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Mt. Prospect at 10 a.m. with a Life Celebration to follow at 11 a.m.

Visitation is also today from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Kolssak Funeral Home in Wheeling.

Gresens, an exceptional athlete at Resurrection High School (Chicago) where she was named to the school's Hall of Fame, was a member of the Hersey security staff and also coached underlevel softball at the school. She also worked the scorer's table for many years in girls basketball and volleyball.

Gressens put up a quick, valiant fight against cancer before she died at the age of 66.

Her daughter Amy was a standout setter for the 1997 girls volleyball team. She helped lead the Huskies to the Elite Eight IHSA state finals in Normal under current coach Nancy Lill.

"My mom was our biggest fan downstate," said Amy, now an accountant in Wisconsin. "Since the time I was able to walk, she had a baseball bat in my hand. But when I was eight years old, she taught me volleyball and that's the sport I loved." Carol loved Hersey High School.

"That was a family to her," Amy said. "She went back there until she died. And she was golfing until a month ago." Carol loved golfing weekly with her friends and coaching softball at Hersey.

"Carol was passionate and talented in all that she did," said Hersey veteran girls basketball coach Mary Fendley, who also teaches match at the school. "If she were a high school athlete today, we would be reading about her in the Daily Herald sports section every day."

Gresens was an accomplished volleyball and basketball player at the Chicago catholic high school that did not have a softball team when she graduated. She was inducted into the school's Hall of Fame as a member of the class of 1967.

Gresens retired from her job on the security staff at Hersey in 2012. She coached freshmen and junior varsity softball for 10 years.

"She loved her family, Notre Dame and golfing, " Fendley said. "She was Hersey's biggest and most successful prankster, too."

Gresens was able to visit her beloved Notre Dame quite a bit when her daughter Amy attended Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame,

Amy recently earned her master's degree in accounting from Elmhurst College.

"She was able to come to my graduation," Amy said. "She was definitely an inspiration for me. My mom was our junior high volleyball coach at St. Peter Lutheran School (in Arlington Heights) so she knew a lot of the girls on my high school team that went downstate.

"And coaching softball at Hersey was one of her greatest joys."