Hannibal football coach Mark St. Clair didn't want anyone to make a fuss over him.

"I've tried to keep this under my hat," St. Clair said after asking if he knew what the Pirates' next victory meant for him personally.

St. Clair, Hannibal's all-time winningest coach, sits at 99 career wins going into Friday's North Central Missouri Conference game at Boonville. A win would make him just the seventh coach in area history to reach the century mark in wins with one school.

"The 100-win mark is a pretty big one for a football coach," St. Clair quickly conceded before going back into coaches mode for a second. "I'm just looking to try to get us our second conference win. Heck, these kids were in kindergarten or hadn't even started school when I first started here."

This year's Pirate seniors were in kindergarten when St. Clair coached his first games as Hannibal's head coach in the fall of 1997. He had been a Pirates assistant for eight years before that, spending a season with Greg Nesbitt and seven years with Paul Thomas.

St. Clair knew all about Hannibal's history by the time he took over. He was intent on carrying on the tradition and enhancing it.

"We had only won one playoff game at that time," St. Clair said.

St. Clair changed the team's playoff fortunes soon after taking over the program. St. Clair's Pirates won their first playoff game in 2000. A year later, the Pirates made the Class 4 state semifinals.

In 2006, Hannibal made it all the way to the state championship game before falling to state power Webb City 26-0 at the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis.

During the St. Clair era, the Pirates have won or shared the NCMC title six times, going 60-16 in the process. The team has made the playoffs five times, going 7-5 and winning at least one game each postseason run before last year's opening-round loss.

His success hasn't come by accident. When he took over, St. Clair made a point of it to call successful coaches around Missouri like Camdenton's Bob Shore, Jefferson City Helias' Ray Hentges and John Henage of Columbia Rock Bridge to see how they race successful programs.

He credited working under both Nesbitt and Thomas as well as working alongside Frank Lemons. He took the lessons learned while serving at Quincy High School as junior high basketball coach under Jerry Leggett and a track coach under Kerry Anders and helped apply it to his new job.

Getting to 100 wins, he said, was never a goal.

"You always coach for that week," St. Clair said. "All I'm thinking about this week is Boonville, I've always thought that the wins and losses will take of themselves."

St. Clair is more than the coach Pirates fans see on the sidelines -- the guy giving official quizzical looks after calls and pushing his players onto the field on offense after giving them the play call.

Few know that the Pirate skipper is also quite a poet. Since that 2006 playoff appearance, he's given his team a poem he penned called "The Dome:"

So you want to go back to the dome,

Or is that just talk?

You say that's your goal,

But can you walk the walk?

It will take a committment,

No excuses will do ...

Everyone wants to go,

so it's really up to you

Will you do what it takes,

to make it to the dome?

Or will you just say

I have to work or go home?

Excuses are many,

you know they all stink.,

So let's not make them,

The dome is worth it, don't you think?

Your high school days will be over

before you blink an eye,

Will you do what is needed,

or just look back and ask why?

Make a committment to excellence

an on the state leave a stamp,

Lift, run and prepare

to become a state champ!

As long as he keeps on going, somewhere inside St. Clair's next 100 wins will be that state championship.

-- dobrien@whig.com/221-3365