The man they call “Coach”

Phil Lebo - Grundy Center Spartans

In the tight-knit Grundy Center community, some titles are earned over time. For Philip “Phil” Lebo, that title is simply — and forever — “Coach.”

Even now, years removed from the classroom and the dugout, former students don’t call him Phil. They don’t call him Mr. Lebo. They call him Coach. “When people see him, they still call him ‘Coach,’” his son Andy says. “And that’s the ultimate compliment.”

We sat down to talk to Phil at Creekside Assisted Living. He shrugged when asked about his career, as if three decades of impact could be summed up in a sentence. “Oh, I did it all my life,” he says. “Coached a little bit of everything.” Football. Track. Junior high baseball. High school baseball. Drove the bus. Dragged the field. Taught middle school science in between.

Ever since he began teaching, he coached. “I coached all of them years,” he says simply.

There were championships along the way. He served as an assistant coach when the Spartans won their first state football title in 1984 — a ring he still keeps close. In 1993, baseball made a run to the state tournament. But when Phil talks about those seasons, it isn’t with flash. It’s with fondness. “We went to state once,” he says. “That was a good one. I had fun.”

Baseball, especially, holds his heart. A former college catcher at Morningside, he never quite left the diamond. “I love baseball,” he says. “I played in college and coached all those years.”

For the Lebos, being a Spartan truly was a family affair. His wife taught across the hall from him for years and kept the scorebook for games. Their son sat in the dugout. His daughter played softball. “We’d go home after games and eat dinner together,” Andy remembers. “The whole family was in the dugout — except the dog.”

Over time, the gym lights and stadium lights blended into something deeper than wins and losses. “He coached a ton of sports and coached a lot of lives,” Andy says. “You’re getting them at their high, and you’re getting them at their low sometimes.”

Middle school can be an awkward season of life. Phil understood that. Teaching science by day and coaching by night meant he often saw students more than anyone else did. For some, that steady presence mattered.

Top row: Phil is inducted into the Iowa High School Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame; Phil and his son, Andy, in 2026; Phil at a Hall of Fame ceremony.

Bottom row: Phil and wife Nancy on the field after a game; Phil takes a swing during practice; Phil and Nancy teaching together; Phil in the dugout.

The honors followed — Iowa High School Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame inductee, Grundy Center High School Hall of Fame, and President of the board of the Iowa High School Coaches Association — but the real measure of his career isn’t etched in metal. It’s in the way the community still pulls up a chair for him at games.

Today, Coach Phil is back in the stands, this time cheering for his grandson, whose senior class went 50–1 over their high school football career including one of the longest win streaks in state history. The school makes sure he gets there. Someone always stops to talk. Someone always shakes his hand.

“He’s famous locally,” Andy jokes.

But fame was never the goal.

For Coach Phil, it was always about the “school of coaching” — the practices after school, the bus rides home, the quiet conversations that shaped young lives long after the scoreboard went dark.

The state championship ring still catches the light. But it’s the title he never takes off that matters most.

Coach.