Bob Tripure, legendary Lexington baseball and basketball coach, has died at 85
Bob Tripure, whose incredible high school baseball and basketball coaching legacy in Lexington spanned four decades, garnered three state championships and earned him recognition in five halls of fame, passed away at his home on Saturday at the age of 85.
Robert Wayne Tripure, “Coach Trip,” led Henry Clay High School’s baseball team to a state championship in 1973, led Henry Clay’s girls basketball team to a state championship in 1990 and led Lexington Catholic to a girls basketball state championship in 1999.
“In 34 years of coaching girls basketball, baseball and boys JV basketball, 55 teams in all, (Tripure) never had a losing season,” stated Tripure’s Dawahares/KHSAA Hall of Fame nomination form signed by former Henry Clay principal Bill Hurt in 2000.
Tripure is the only coach in Kentucky high school girls basketball history to lead two different schools to state titles. He also assisted Henry Clay’s legendary boys basketball coach, Al Prewitt, for 20 years, including the Blue Devils’ 1983 Boys’ Sweet 16 state championship.
“It never was a job to me. I never did feel like I was going to work,” Tripure said of his career in coaching in a 2020 interview with the Herald-Leader. “I had good principals, athletic-minded principals that let us coach. They created an atmosphere for us to be successful. I always appreciated that.”
Former Herald-Leader high school sports writer Mike Fields wrote dozens of stories over the years on Tripure’s teams.
“Trip was a sportswriter’s dream with his quick wit and spontaneous sense of humor,” Fields said. “Those traits also helped him forge a special connection with his players and make him a championship coach.”
For Henry Clay’s baseball team, Tripure was a baseball assistant from 1964 to 1969 and head coach from 1970 to 1992, compiling a record of 582-138 and winning 10 district titles, four region titles and the 1973 state championship.
Last Tuesday, some Henry Clay alumni gathered to honor Tripure. Among those in attendance was former player John T. Shelby, a two-time Major League Baseball World Series champion who played for Henry Clay in the mid-1970s. Shelby started in center field for both the 1983 Baltimore Orioles and the 1988 Los Angeles Dodgers before embarking on his own coaching career.
He remembered Tripure for his warmth and humor.
“He was very passionate, not only as a coach, but as a friend to many and especially to his family,” Shelby told the Herald-Leader on Wednesday. “He was a fearless competitor, always energetic, always talking, which was one of his gifts. … He knew how to encourage you and sometimes that encouragement might be a little harsh, but he was very witty. He didn’t hold back, but he cared about people.”
In a 2020 interview upon Tripure’s announced induction into the Kentucky High School Basketball Hall of Fame, former Lexington Catholic player Kelli Stamper Reynolds spoke of her coach in the same way.
“He was hard on us, but it was motivational,” said Reynolds, who was part of Tripure’s 1999 state title run and remains the LexCath’s girls program’s all-time leading scorer. “He wasn’t just trying to get us down. He motivated us in a way with tough love, I guess. Everybody responded to that. And he knew how to treat the player based on their personality. Not a lot of coaches have that.”
In girls basketball, Tripure coached Henry Clay from 1986 to 1992, leading the Blue Devils to seven consecutive 11th Region championships and the 1990 Girls’ Sweet 16 crown.
He retired after the 1992 season, but returned to coaching when the opportunity to take over Lexington Catholic’s girls program came along.
“The best thing I ever did was get into girls basketball,” Tripure told the Herald-Leader in 1994 after it was announced he would coach at LexCath. “I never thought at the time that I’d love it like I do.”
Tripure built the Knights’ program into a powerhouse, retiring again upon winning the school’s first Girls’ Sweet 16 crown in 1999. Current Eastern Kentucky women’s coach Greg Todd took the Knights to five more state finals over the next seven years, winning three of them.
Tripure compiled a record of 384-72 in his 15-year career as a girls basketball coach.
In addition to the Dawahares/KHSAA and high school basketball halls of fame, Tripure has been inducted into halls of fame at Georgetown College, Henry Clay High School and the Kentucky High School Baseball Coaches Association.
Born July 28, 1938, in New Albany, Indiana, to parents James and Marguerite Tripure, Bob Tripure graduated from Georgetown High School there and attended Georgetown College in Kentucky where he played baseball and earned his degree in education.
Upon graduation, he married fellow Georgetown College graduate Betty Baker and they moved to Lexington where both became teachers.
Tripure’s survivors include his sons, Pete Tripure and John (Christi) Tripure; daughter, Edie Tripure, six grandchildren (Lakin, Clay, Michael, Ethan, Allison, Phoebe) and two great-grandchildren (Jace, Junie). He was preceded in death by his wife, Betty, and son, Tim.
Funeral services are scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Friday at Kerr Brothers Funeral Home on Harrodsburg Road. Burial will be at 2 p.m. Friday at Tunnel Hill Cemetery, 5105 Old Georgetown Road in Georgetown, Indiana, Visitation was scheduled from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday at the funeral home.
This story was originally published March 28, 2024 at 7:07 AM.
