Friends rally around ailing former Norristown coach Grove

Roger Grove, the long-time football coach at Norristown High School, is home from Phoenixville Hospital.

But according to friends, he is not doing well in his fight against cancer.

Grove, who had been suffering from skin cancer, saw the disease become aggressive over this past summer and fall and he was hospitalized recently with a dire prognosis.

Some friends who have visited him said he’s doing well under the circumstances, but has not been given much of a chance to recover.

“He’s alert,” said former assistant coach Brian Kennedy, who has visited Grove a number of times. “He can hold a conversation, but the prognosis is not good.
“He went home under hospice care, but it’s definitely not good.”

With word of Grove’s medical problems becoming more and more known throughout the Norristown community, his family and former players have rallied, with his players taking pictures and sending well wishes through Facebook and other cyber outlets.

With Grove’s 70th birthday coming up this Friday, the Grove family is asking friends and well wishers to send birthday cards to the coach at his home to help cheer him up.

Grove became the head coach of the Norristown football program in 1976 and was the coach there for 27 seasons, compiling a 209-98-6 record.

After retiring, Grove went to Neshaminy High School and helped good friend and former Norristown assistant Mark Schmidt, then the head coach of the Neshaminy program, and the program flourished, winning the state championship in 2001 and reaching the state final in 2004.

Grove was a part of the 2004 staff, primarily coaching running backs and helping out with the Neshaminy offense. He was on the sidelines when the team played in the state final in 2004.

Perhaps the greatest honor in Grove’s career was being inducted into the Pa. State Football Coaches Hall of Fame in 2002.

For the moment, Grove’s family and friends are hopeful of spending more time with the ailing coach.

“I’ve seen him quite a few times in the last couple of weeks,” Kennedy said. “Sometimes it’s tough visiting him, because it’s not the same Roger Grove we’ve known all of these years.

“But he’s meant so much to the Norristown football program and the Norristown sports community, and we all just want him to be happy in the time he has left.”