Robert T. Clark Award

Jim Algeo, Lansdale Catholic High School

Jim Algeo is the winner of the 1st Robert T. Clark Award for outstanding contributions to the game of football. The award is named after the long-time executive director of the Maxwell Football Club and Algeo certainly shares Clark’s commitment to the sport.

Algeo, 71, has been head football coach at Lansdale Catholic High School for 40 years. Prior to that, he was an assistant coach at Cardinal Dougherty High School, Sun Valley and Penncrest. He is a member of the Pennsylvania Scholastic Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

A native of Sharon Hill, Delaware County, Algeo did not start playing football until he was enrolled at Pennsylvania Military College (now Widener University) in Chester. Prior to that, he attended high school at Holy Spirit Prep in South Bend, In., a seminary school. He intended to enter the priesthood, but discovered his true calling was to teach and coach.

 “I thought I was disappointing my mother and father (by leaving the seminary),” Algeo told Dom Cosentino of the Doylestown Intelligencer, “but I came to the realization that you have to do what you think is right. You can’t do it based on what somebody else thinks you should do.”

At PMC, Algeo played guard and linebacker on the football squad. He also met Mary Margaret (Mickey) Philliben, who would become his wife. Today, they have nine children and 14 grandchildren.

One of their sons, Dan, won Philadelphia Catholic League championships as head football coach at Roman Catholic and Cardinal O’Hara. Another son, John, is defensive coordinator on Jim’s staff at Lansdale Catholic. Daughter Maggie is the girl’s basketball coach at the same school.

“Trust me, I will never marry another football coach during football season,” Mickey said. “It was 40 years before we went on our honeymoon. I’d say, ‘Jim, you’ve been on a honeymoon. I’ve been home with nine kids.”

In his profile on the Algeo family, Cosentino wrote: “Mickey used to ask Jim when he’d become a college coach, when he would be like Vince Lombardi...But Jim would never have any of it. At a high school, especially at Lansdale Catholic, it’s pure, he would say. You can still teach, you can still learn and you can still get to know everyone.”

Algeo is more than a teacher and coach for the students at Lansdale Catholic, he is also a mentor to other coaches in the region. Tim Quinn, a Lansdale Catholic alumnus and former head coach at North Catholic, recalls Algeo showing him a photograph of his grandchildren and saying: “This is what it’s all about.”

“He is a man that is a man of character,” Quinn said. “He will support you for whatever you do. He’s a family man who holds God first and he hold the blue-collar values that the school was built on. Words really won’t justify all that he does for Lansdale Catholic.”