When Cali Rollins showed up to her first Merrimack Valley Middle School softball practice in 2023, she had little idea of the legacy that preceded her. But when her mother, Morgan Mahon, emailed her daughter’s new coach that spring, Tom Burke had little trouble connecting the dots.

Back in the 1970s, Burke had coached Rollins’s grandfather when he was a schoolboy at the St. John Regional School.

“He said [Cali] was a born athlete based off of how my dad was,” Mahon said.

Encouraged by Burke’s belief in her athletic ability, Rollins took up pitching for the first time that season – a position that she has devoted herself to perfecting since.

“He taught me that if I put my mind to it, I can play any position,” Rollins said. “He’s the one who got me into pitching.”

Rollins and her grandfather, John Mahon, are among hundreds of athletes coached by Burke, perhaps the most prolific youth sports coach in Merrimack Valley history. Burke died last week at the age of 73 after a year-long battle with cancer.

After 54 years manning the sidelines of Concord-area baseball, softball, basketball, and football games, Burke coached roughly 125 teams, starting as a middle school basketball coach at the age of 19 and coaching his final game two months before his death.

He was a dedicated public servant in all aspects of his life, rising to the rank of sergeant in the state police during a three-decade career, before retiring in 2002. Burke then served as Merrimack Valley’s director of transportation for 18 years, coordinating and – more often than not – driving the bus routes for the school district.

During visitation hours and a funeral held on Monday in the MV high school gymnasium, hundreds of former colleagues in the state police and school district, athletes from his teams from the 1970s to 2024, children whose busses he drove, friends, and neighbors celebrated Burke’s mentorship, kindness, witty sense of humor, uncanny memory, and penchant for bestowing nicknames upon those he loved.

“He’s one in a million,” said Pam Pierce, a bus driver who worked for Burke.

Miah Boucher, 22, both laughed and cried as she recalled how Burke, her middle school and AAU basketball coach, built up her confidence so high that “at one point, we were convinced we were going to play for [the] UConn basketball” team.

In addition to nicknames, Burke developed inside jokes with those in his life that he never forgot – even years or decades later. Burke’s joke about Boucher was that she would have to get knee replacement surgery by the time she was 30 – a procedure that Burke himself had undergone. Melanie Burr, who was coached by Burke back in the late ‘80s, recalled Burke would call her “Mildred” even as an adult. She never did learn the etymology of her nickname.

After graduating from Bishop Brady High School in 1969, Burke began coaching basketball at St. John the following year. For many years, he coached multiple sports – especially softball, baseball and basketball – across a range of ages. For one year, he moonlighted as Merrimack Valley High’s assistant football coach.

Since his father passed away on Aug. 12, Chris Burke, one of Tom Burke’s three sons, has been thanked countless times for sharing his dad with hundreds of other Merrimack Valley children.

“We shared him with everybody, but it never felt like that,” said Chris, who replaced his father as the school district’s director of transportation.

The elder Burke married his wife, Donna, in 1974 and the couple celebrated their 50th anniversary weeks before he passed away. Two days after their anniversary, Burke experienced the joy of the birth of his sixth grandchild.

Burke, who was diagnosed with stage IV bile duct cancer last year, never let on that he was sick.

“I don’t know how to gracefully stop” coaching, Burke said in an interview with the Monitor in May for the newspaper’s Hometown Hero series. “I still enjoy it.”

He never did stop, coaching what would turn out to be his final game – a 17-11 Merrimack Valley junior varsity softball victory over Pelham – on May 21.

Avery Snarey, a first baseman on that final team who played under Burke for three years, said it felt just like any other game. The team, she said, hadn’t yet talked about the loss of their coach, but many were in attendance Monday to share memories of Burke and pay their respects.

In September, Burke will be posthumously inducted into Merrimack Valley’s Hall of Fame, an honor he learned about in the weeks before his death.

“He was big on giving back to his community,” his son, Chris, said. “It was always for the kids.”

Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.