Former Jacobs coach Biagioni passes
Jacobs girls volleyball coach Lisa Dwyer was being readied to be a head coach long before she took the reins on Bunker Hill Drive.
Prior to her current post, Dwyer spent 9 years as the varsity assistant of former Jacobs head coach Don Biagioni who passed away recently in Ohio at the age of 64 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.
“Besides the coaching aspect he was always letting me know about the administrative stuff,” Dwyer said. “He was always giving pointers about the program. He always let me come to the all-conference meetings with him. That let me see another part of the job. He always made sure to ask my opinion. He was always there for me if I needed to talk. He gave me a lot of good advice about volleyball, the classroom or just things in general.”
Dwyer, in her 18th year of teaching at Jacobs, was given her first high school coaching break by Biagioni.
“He took me on as a first-year coach,” Dwyer said. “I coached the freshmen for two years. It was nice that he gave me the opportunity. He always looked out for me.”
Dwyer, a 1988 graduate of Dundee-Crown, remembers Biagioni as a straight shooter who had plenty of humorous sayings and kept his office stocked with plenty of snack foods.
“He’d always have M & M’s and peanuts,” she laughed. “I’d go in there and talk to him about something and I’d end up eating the stuff for 20 minutes straight. He was a good man with a great personality.”
Biagioni, the former head of the guidance department at Jacobs, retired from District 300 in 2005 after more than 35 years of service at district schools. He previously taught at Algonquin Middle School. He was also a fixture for many years working the scorer’s table at Jacobs basketball games.
On the court Biagioni, appreciated by local media members for his laid-back and straightforward chats, presided over the two most successful seasons in the history of the Jacobs volleyball program. His 1997 team went 33-6 and won a regional title.
The 1998 Golden Eagles team, anchored by standouts Jorie Miguel (now Jorie Fontana and the head coach at Crystal Lake South) and Sarah Ahnen, followed that up with a 38-2 mark and won the program’s first sectional title before losing to Lake Forest at the Class AA Palatine supersectional. Biagioni’s group was the first Jacobs athletic team to win a sectional championship in the history of the school.
“He was always very realistic about things,” said Dwyer who fondly recalls seeing Biagioni lunching with Dick Hartley, the former Jacobs football coach who passed away in recent years. “He was so down to earth. He always told me to make sure to spend time with family.”
Dwyer recalls a familiar refrain she would hear at matches when the two coached together.
“A lot of people would say ‘It’s nice to see father and daughter coaching together.’” Dwyer said. “We’re both Italian. People would think he was my dad. I always looked up to him as a father figure.”
Biagioni, who in his retirement spent a year coaching at Perrysburg High School, is survived by his wife, Sheila, son, Matthew, and daughter, Amy, who was on her father’s coaching staff at Jacobs at one time, as well as two grandchildren.
Funeral services will be held Friday in Spring Valley. Biagioni is a DePue native.
Biagioni is the second prominent Fox Valley Conference girls volleyball coach to pass away in recent months. Longtime Crystal Lake Central coach and athletic director Doug Blundy passed away after a long battle with cancer in January.