Babe Hollingberry began his coaching career at the Lick School of Mechanical Arts, a High School equivalent trade school in San Francisco’s Potrero District with an enrollment of only 300 boys. His team nearly won the state championship. Although the school ultimately absorbed the Wilmerding and Lux endowments, relocated to a new campus, accepted female students and became a nationally recognized college preparatory school it would never achieve the athletic pinnacle reached by Babe’s Boys.
Olympic Club football teams were an integral part of the Bay Area sports scene during the 1920s and early 30s, and together with teams from UC, Stanford, Santa Clara, St. Mary’s, and USF offered sports fans a wide variety of entertainment on the amateur level. In 1920 “Brick” Mitchell was coach and Babe Hollingbery was captain of the Winged O Team. Babe quickly moved up to Football Commissioner under Bob Evans in 1922 when the OC won the Pacific Coast Club Championships. In addition to Club matches the team also played the big college teams that season and against that stiff competition they suffered only one defeat, a 25-0 loss to the “Wonder Team” of Andy Smith at California.
In 1925, with Hollingbery as coach the OC team got their revenge, snapping California’s long winning streak. Local sports writers recognized the OC squad as one of the best teams on the Pacific Coast and the Babe was made Assistant Coach of the West Coast Shrine All Stars. OC footballers invited to play for the West that year were Jimmy Needles, Buck Bailey, Russ Avery, Percy Locey, Norman Cleveland, Jack Patrick, Scotchy Campbell, Bob Brown, Harry Shipkey and Jimmy Bradshaw.
In 1926 Babe was recruited by Washington State and he had a magnificent career there. Coaching college football was neither a full-time nor a highly paid position in the 20s and each year after his three-month coaching stint in Washington he returned to San Francisco where he ran a gas station.
