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Legendary coach Laddie Lawrence has Staples CT boys in hunt at NXR Northeast

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DyeStat.com   Nov 22nd 2017, 10:01pm
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Legacy of success at Staples CT runs through Laddie

By Brian Towey for DyeStat

On a mid-October day at New Canaan, Connecticut's Waveny Park cross country course, with a Fairfield County Interscholastic Conference (FCIAC) championship on the line, the Staples High School boys cross country teams gathered under a towering pine tree near the finish.

“’Yo!’ boomed a voice. ‘Over here!’”

For 50 years, John “Laddie” Lawrence has shepherded runners here, in southern Connecticut. A vigorous man of 71 with an easy manner, Lawrence gathered his boys around him, then dispensed advice.

“Laddie, should I go to orchestra tonight?” asked one blond-haired runner.

“I don’t know. What do you your parents think?” Lawrence said.

After resolving that non-running related question, Lawrence fielded another. Then another. 

For Lawrence, at Staples, it’s always been “Laddie.” Not “Mr. Lawrence” and  not “Coach.”

“I don’t let anybody call me ‘Coach,’” said Lawrence, who got the nickname from his Scottish grandfather, who used to call him “little lad.”

“When I introduce myself to kids and their parents at the information meeting, it’s as Laddie. I tell the parents, ‘He’s going to come home and say, Laddie said this, Laddie said that, and you’re going to say to him, ‘No, it’s Mr. Lawrence.’ But don’t you dare correct him.’”

Led by their legendary coach, Staples will run at the NXR Northeast regional on Saturday at Bowdoin Park in New York.

Cross country has been a fixture at Staples since 1962, since Lawrence, Creigh Kelley and Jay Eason, all students and spring track runners (and football players), approached their athletic director about forming a cross country team.

“He said, ‘Find me a coach and you can have a team,’” Lawrence said. “We knew of a history teacher, Beck Brown, who’d run at Columbia. When we asked him he said, ‘I don't know anything about coaching, but I can do it.’”

Lawrence left the school for Southern Arkansas University on a full track scholarship as a quarter-miler (he won the Connecticut Open State Championship in the 440-yard dash in 1964 in 49.3 seconds). That’s when Tom Hall, a science teacher, took over the program. For three of Hall’s next eight coaching years, Lawrence served as a volunteer assistant.

“I knew in high school I wanted to coach,” said Lawrence, who served as Southern Arkansas’ interim cross country coach during his college days while running for the team.

After Southern Arkansas, where he had run track and cross country and also served as a resident assistant in the university’s first racially integrated dormitory, Lawrence returned to Connecticut. He took a job in Bridgeport as a teacher and continued to work with the runners at Staples, this time as an indoor assistant coach. But despite Lawrence’s sprints background, his passion lay with cross country.

“Cross country is my favorite,” Lawrence said. “It’s the most team-oriented of the team-oriented sports because if you don’t have that strong fifth, sixth, and seventh runners, you’re not going to win.”

Setting the bar

Zak Ahmad is a freshman distance runner at the University of Pennsylvania. He dipped under nine minutes in the 3,200-meter run last year as a senior at Staples (8:58.86). But perhaps his most outstanding accomplishment happened in the fall of his senior year, when Staples’ boys cross country team qualified for Nike Cross Nationals in Portland, Ore., becoming only the second team from Connecticut to do it (along with Danbury in 2007).

“You see a lot of individuals (from Connecticut) do something at that level, but teams hadn’t been there as much,” Ahmad said. “It felt like it had an impact in the state.”

For teams within Connecticut, Staples’ achievement broke the paradigm of what was deemed possible.

“I think with Staples making it out there last year it was like, ‘Oh crap, we’ve got to go (to Nike Cross Nationals),” Xavier CT coach Chris Stonier said. “We’ve got to start this tradition. It opened their eyes that there was more beyond Connecticut.”

For Lawrence, the program has always been built on the robust tradition of Fairfield-area teams.

“We’ve had a number of strong programs right in this area,” Lawrence said. “Fairfield Prep, they have an amazing runner right now (Drew Thompson). Danbury has had six coaches during the time that I’ve been here. And they’ve always been strong.

“It’s about the communities in the area and it’s about the traditions in those communities.”

For Staples, a part of that tradition includes Per Haarr.

“In 1958 we can had exchange student named Per Haarr,” Lawrence said. “He was from Norway. He was the Norwegian national men’s decathlon champion. We’d go to dual meets and he’d win six events. He’d win all the field events and he could run the 440 in 48. It’s good he didn’t run the individual 440, because I have the school record. His performances were as good as Rafer Johnson’s.

“Unfortunately, in 1959 he died in Norway in a training accident. They found him in a stream. He hit his head. They think he drowned.”

According to Lawrence, at Staples, the story of Per Haarr urges the call among Staples’ athletes: “Can you be as good as Per Haarr?”

“Everyone knew the legend of Per Haarr and I think we drew inspiration on it based on what it meant to Laddie,” said Adam Polite, a decathlete who graduated from Staples in 2002.

“Every year we had the Per Haarr Relays, a meet we held at Staples. To see how much care he put into that meet – the organizing of officials, setting things up – it really showed how important it was to him.

“I always felt like we had our best performances at the Per Haarr Relays. That meet felt like it had a different aura. It was special.”

Track office 'museum'

Beneath the fieldhouse at Staples High, tucked deep within a series of winding hallways, is Lawrence’s office. It’s shared with two other coaches, but it’s a museum dedicated to Staples running, stuffed with photos, mementos and memories.

“The other coaches tell me I’ve got to get rid of this stuff,” Lawrence said of the rows of framed photographs. “But I can’t. The kids want to see photos of themselves.”

There are photos of Lawrence’s sons, John and Andrew, who both competed for him, and later served as assistant coaches (dozens of Lawrence’s former athletes have served as assistants for him) and scores of teams from the past.

There’s a snapshot of the scoreboard at the indoor track at Boston University, where Henry Wynne, a five-time prep All-American and 2013 alumnus (and later NCAA mile champion) who ran at the University of Virginia, broke four minutes in the mile for the first time, running 3:58.74. He was the second Staples alumnus to break four minutes in the mile, following Steve Wheeler, who did it at Duke in the 1970s.

“He doesn’t put too much pressure on the guys,” said Wynne, who now runs professionally for the Brooks Beasts. “We’re doing the hard workouts (but) he’s not forcing you to do something. He sets a template and it’s something that people do, not because they’re forced.”

In his 43-plus years as a physical education teacher at Staples (Lawrence retired from that job in 2015), Lawrence’s office was always open to students. Next to the track pictures sits a stuffed teddy bear with a bow across its neck.

“This was from a student of mine,” Lawrence said. “He took a class with the president of his university that had to do with mentorship. They asked each student to give this (bear) to someone who was a mentor to them. He gave it to me.”

Greg Lott, class of 2000, spent only one year under Lawrence. After moving to Westport from California, and living without his parents for a time, Lawrence made sure that everything was in order, that Lott was in the right classes and even catching dinner with different families.

“He is a genuinely caring person,” said Lott, who is now the assistant athletic director at Denison University in Ohio and also served as an assistant track and field coach at the United States Military Academy and head coach at the Merchant Marine Academy.

“Not only for knowledge and training, but he was just a person who cared for all of us as people and wanted us to be successful. He really had it all in what you look for in a coach.”

Legacy carries on

In 2015, Lawrence was inducted into the National High School Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame in Rochester, Minn. Creigh Kelley (pronounced “Cree”), his former teammate at Staples and race announcer, was there.

“He’s one of the most unusual, understated, unassuming guys I’ve ever met,” Kelley said. “He was the archetypal teammate, leader, all of those things and the rest of us were misfits he corralled into a team.”

Kelley stumbled onto track quite by accident.

“We were going to have a fight in the parking lot,” Kelley said. “Another guy said to me, ‘You should join the track team.’ I made the team, got a jersey and had to quit smoking. They had this stud on the team named ‘Laddie.’ I wasn’t even in his universe.”

Kelley is now a prominent announcer for triathlons and marathons in the United States.

“Laddie said to me, ‘You should join the cross country team in the fall,’” Kelley said. “I didn’t know what cross country was. That’s when the journey began for me. That’s where it began for all of us.”

At Staples, the numbers speak to the program’s dominance. Thirty-plus undefeated seasons. More than 1,700 victories (698-138 all-time in cross-country dual meets alone). More than 40 state championships and nine All-Americans.

“I became a coach because of ‘Laddie,’” said Jesse Gaylord, a 2002 Staples alumnus who is the athletic director, cross country and track and field coach at The Field School in Washington, D.C.

“That’s because he set the bar so high for me and my teammates. In high school, winning state championships was the norm. In 11 seasons in high school, we won nine state championships.

"Part of his brilliance is the self-ownership (he promotes) of the program. He was never a coach that talked about specific times. It was simply, ‘We are a group, we are doing this together. We’re going to be great together.’”

Lawrence’s influence on Westport, the town his grandfather emigrated to from Brooklyn in 1877, is profound. As high schoolers, Lawrence and Kelley started a Saturday morning running club to train athletes for football, soccer and track.

Today, it’s grown into a Road Runners Race Series in summers on Saturday mornings in Westport, with roughly 1,700 participants (largely in their 30s, 40s and 50s) gathering 10 times during the summer to run. 

As the shadows fell on Waveny Park on Oct. 18, the racers gathered for their awards ceremony.

“In fifth place, for Warde, Alex Mocarski.”

“In fourth place, for Staples, Christian Myers.”

“In third place, for Staples, William Landowne.” 

Another chapter in Connecticut running lore had been written. The next one is lying in wait.

“One of the things I told them before the (league championship) race was about relationships,” Lawrence said. “And how you’ve found these great relationships through athletics. You’ve got a relationship with your teammates. If you feel tired during the race, think about them. They’re depending on you.”



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