Goodbye to Elmo

One of the first basketball games I covered for the Daily Herald about 16 years ago was a Prospect boys game, which had to be moved to Forest View because of a fire in the Prospect field house. A Prospect player was staggering, stumbling and fumbling a ball that finally squirted out of bounds toward the Prospect bench.
On that sideline, a tall and somewhat gruff looking guy jumped up and yelled "It's the ORANGE thing!!!"
That was Glen Elms, who as a reporter you came to appreciate not only for his knowledge of the game but his honesty about those who played it. He wasn't going to snowball you if his team wasn't good or sandbag if his team was good.
Honesty was his policy - no matter who it was with. Current Rolling Meadows coach Kevin Katovich related a few stories about Elms just a few hours after his death from pancreatic cancer.
"My first or second year we were really struggling and had lost six or seven in a row," said Katovich, who worked for Elms for four years at Prospect. "I said, 'Can we go out and talk.' We were talking about something else for an hour and I said, 'Glen, we haven't talked about basketball in an hour.
"He said, 'That's because you guys are TERRIBLE. What do you want me to do."
Another was when Katovich suggested Elms abandon his trademark matchup zone and open in a man-to-man against Conant. After Conant hit a 3-pointer, Elms called timeout 15 seconds into the game.
"All during the timeout Glen was yelling at me," Katovich laughed at his failed suggestion.
Then there was Glen Elms Night in his final regular-season home game before his retirement in 2000. A Prospect win wrapped up the MSL East title and a spot in the league title game.
The game was hardly memorable but was tied going into the final seconds with a struggling Wheeling team. A Wheeling player missed an open layup and the ball went out of bounds to Prospect under the basket with about two seconds left.
Prospect tried a long downcourt pass but it was intercepted by Ray Grady, who banked in a 60-footer at the buzzer in front of a silently stunned Prospect Field House, save for a smattering of Wheeling fans.
But it didn't make Glen Elms night a total loss.
"He said what do you want me to do," Katovich recalled. "We lost, let's move on."
Some coaches want to draw attention to themselves. That wasn't Elms' style during his 23 years at Forest View and Prospect.
"He wasn't on to go and get the trophy during a trophy presentation," said Prospect boys volleyball coach and good friend Mike Riedy. "That's how he was. He did the job and wanted to stay in the background. That's how he was with volleyball, too. He wanted to work with kids."
Which showed as he continued to help with the volleyball team as an assistant after he retired in 2000 - including the last 3 years as an unpaid volunteer.
"That's another sign of what Glen was like," Riedy said. "He could be sitting up at his lake house (in Wisconsin) on his jet ski.
"He was a guy who was a straight shooter. If Glen shook your hand that meant something because he didn't shake hands with everybody."
Current Hersey basketball and football assistant Chad Freeman was a starting guard on Elms' 1991 Prospect team that is the only one in school history to reach the Sweet 16. Freeman's dad Ron was the athletic trainer at Forest View when Elms was coaching and teaching there.
"He was really a compassionate guy," Freeman said. "You'd see the gruff demeanor and scowl on the sideline but he had a heart of a giant.
"He was really the motivating factor and reason I'm doing what I'm doing. I saw the impact he had on people around him and that was pretty impressive. I knew what I wanted to do in high school from being around that guy."
Freeman said having Elms attend his JV games he was coaching "meant a lot." Elms also frequently helped Katovich and Fremd coach Bob Widlowski, whose dad worked with Elms at Forest View, with the matchup zone.
Katovich planned to have him come in to help in November - but in October, Elms started having stomach pains and had a mass the size of a watermelon removed. Cancer had spread to his colon and pancreas and ultimately his lungs.
I was looking forward to running into him as always at a boys game or upcoming Christmas tournament. I know I'm with many who will miss him.