Coaching boys cross country has made Jerry Bielizna a fixture at Joel Barlow High School. Now in his 50th season, he gives several reasons why he has stuck with it all this time. One is his love of the sport.
“I really like cross country, the sport, and the guys are usually really nice kids to work with,” he said. “They grow into becoming competitive.”
Another is his friendship with the coaches of other schools in the South-West Conference. Besides Bielizna, a number of them such Bob Taborsak (Danbury), Mark Goodwin (Bethel), Marty Sauer (Brookfield) and John Osborne (Ridgefield) also ran at Danbury High for coach Dan O’Grady.
“Unlike a lot of other sports, the cross country coaches are close,” said Bielizna. “Many of us have been doing it for many years, and we’re good friends, and I look forward to seeing them during the season and competing against them. It’s fun.”
Bielizna first came to Barlow in the fall of 1973 as a history teacher. The following year, he became cross country coach when the previous coach, Warren DeFrank, resigned.
“One day we were eating lunch, and I was talking to him about the team, and he said you know anything about cross country?” recalled Bielizna. “And I said I know a little bit. He then asked how would you like to be the coach? And I said OK, and I applied and I became the coach the following year.”
It was not the only sport he would coach at Barlow. In the spring of 1975 he became assistant boys track coach for Gene Primavera, becoming the head coach years later.
Due to budget reductions, he was one of several teachers cut from Barlow, but was rehired in 1976 when an opening appeared. He was also re-hired as a coach.
Under Bielizna’s guidance, Barlow rose to prominence in boys cross country in 1990. That fall it won its first of a number of state Class M championships, one of the most memorable moments in his career as a coach.
Although most of the runners on that team graduated after that season, Barlow began to rebuild and had one of its best performances in 1994 when it went undefeated during the season and won its first league championship in the final year of the Western Connecticut Conference.
“I was so excited,” he said. “That was a really big deal to us because Barlow had never won the league title.”
A year later, the Falcons pulled off an upset in the inaugural season in the South-West Conference. Despite being without several runners from the previous year, it stunned Newtown (which had beaten Barlow during the regular season) to capture the championship
“Those were some of the best teams we had in the mid 1990s,” said Bielizna.
Three more Class M titles (and one in Class MM) came between 1997 and 2016. During that span he was named Connecticut High School Coach of the Year in 2013 and was also a finalist for national cross country coach of the year. In 2017 he was inducted into the Barlow Athletic Hall of Fame.
“I can’t tell you what a thrill it is to be at Wickham Park at the state championship and watch the guys finish up a hill, and you’re counting black shirts, and they’re all from Barlow, and you know you have a shot (at winning),” he said. “That’s one of the things that kind of keeps me coming back.”
Bielizna retired from teaching in 2009 and as head boys track coach in 2011 but still continued to coach cross country. In 2021 Barlow again went undefeated and captured the first of back-to-back Class M crowns.
“If you had ever told me I’d be coaching this long I would have told you, you were crazy,” he joked. “It really comes down to the fact that (Athletic Director Mike) Santangeli won’t let me quit, and they won’t fire me.”
