THE LONG RUN

As a tot growing up in Highland Park, Colleen Boilini skipped the middle stage of the crawl-walk-run continuum.

“My mom (Paula) told me I ran before I attempted to walk when I was nine months old,” says Boilini, now 40 years old and the assistant athletic director at her alma mater, Highland Park High School (Class of 2001), since 2011.

Boilini also vaulted from furniture piece to furniture piece at home before she could count to 10 and well before she knew fearless gymnasts received a “10” for a perfect routine.

“I never broke a lamp,” she says. “I never broke a limb.”

But years later, and to the surprise of no one under the Boilini family’s roof, she would hustle along the base paths and break program records in softball, setting the mark for career stolen bases at both HPHS and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater (UW-W).

And the Highwood resident shows no signs of slowing down as a passionate and dedicated administrator/multi-sport coach at HPHS. A stellar athlete in volleyball, basketball, and softball while in high school, Boilini—a Highland Park High School Athletics Hall of Fame inductee in 2013—serves as the Giants’ first girls’ flag football coach and as an assistant girls’ lacrosse coach in addition to her array of responsibilities under the leadership of HPHS Athletic Director Paul Harris.

“I will always be grateful for the opportunities I had to play sports in high school,” says Boilini, who used her speed, determination, and relentlessness, along with her talent and team-first approach, to earn 11 varsity letters at HPHS, including four each in basketball and softball.

Nearly 23 years after reaching on a single, stealing second base, and scoring the winning run in a softball playoff victory over archrival Deerfield High School, Boilini found herself being congratulated—far from a home plate—by adult teammates, namely staffers and coaches at HPHS.

On May 4, in Peoria, Boilini received the Illinois Athletic Directors Association’s State Assistant Athletic Director of the Year award for the 2023-2024 academic year. Harris nominated her.

“When I found out I was a finalist after winning a district segment of the award process,” she recalls, “my reaction was, ‘Wait, I won what? Why me?’”

The recognition was well deserved.

Boilini is in charge of producing all sports schedules at HPHS, as well as ensuring all officials (referees, umpires, etc.) have been assigned to work home contests at each level, from freshman to varsity. She also schedules buses for the teams’ road trips and makes sure school employees are available to serve as home-event workers, i.e., a scoreboard operator and the person in charge of the scorebook at basketball games.

“A lot of what I do could be compared to putting big puzzles together every year,” says Boilini, who also holds the position of girls’ flag football liaison for HPHS’s athletic conference, the Central Suburban League. “You have to be a planner and detail-oriented when you do that, and I’ve always seen myself as that kind of worker.”

There might not be a better-prepared coach in the state to head a girls’ flag football program than Boilini, who has been competing for a Chicago-based women’s flag football team—at the speed positions of wide receiver and safety—since she was 22 years old. Girls’ flag football kicks off its inaugural season as an Illinois High School Association- sanctioned sport this fall, with the official start of the preseason set for August 12.

She’ll then make time in the spring to fulfill her duties as the school’s assistant girls’ lacrosse coach.

“I have to work at night often and during weekends, but I’m used to it, and I don’t mind the hours because I really enjoy coaching and being the assistant AD,” says Boilini, who’s married and expecting a baby this month. “I can see myself doing this for many more years. I’ve had great mentors in (former HPHS softball coach and HPHS Assistant Athletic Director) Lydia Gonzalez and (UW-W softball coach) Brenda Volk. I stress hustle and hard work as a coach.

“One of the many rewards of my positions at Highland Park High School is watching kids play sports that they love under coaches who care deeply about their student-athletes and love what they do. And Paul Harris has always been the epitome of a hardworking administrator, with the way he lives and breathes his job.”

Boilini, a three-time all-Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference softball shortstop at UW-W from 2003-2005, thought about pursuing a career in wildlife rehabilitation after earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology and minoring in Health. But she chased another field after some introspection and applied for admission at George Williams College of Aurora University in Wisconsin, where she received a degree in Recreation Administration.

From 2007-2011, Boilini was an athletic supervisor at the Park District of Highland Park, overseeing programs for girls’ basketball, girls’ and boys’ lacrosse, youth softball, and adult softball, among others.

“That job was a lot like my job now, in that I spent time in an office in the mornings and then got to go outside to spend time with athletes,” Boilini says.

In 2010, she launched Girls Play Strong, a Park District of Highland Park camp designed, in part, for third- through eighthgraders who wouldn’t have to do what many other camps made their female campers do at that time—compete with and against boys.

“My goal was to get more girls in the area interested in sports and activities, one being canoeing,” says Boilini, who battled as the only girl on her Highwood Small Fry youth basketball team back in the days when her father, Pat, set up cones in the Boilini basement that helped Colleen work on her dribbling skills. “I didn’t want girls to be afraid to try a sport.

“We also took the girls on field trips to watch professional women’s teams like the Chicago Bandits (softball) and the Chicago Sky (basketball) compete. It thrills me when females find empowerment through sports while they’re having fun. I started Girls Play Strong so that girls could be introduced to sports in a comfortable setting and maybe eventually fall in love with one of them.”

Or two.

Or maybe even three.

Like a former furniture hopper did.