Kearney ending his long run as coach
Jim Kearney, one of the most storied high school cross country coaches in state history, is hanging it up.
Kearney announced his retirement Tuesday after 35 years as head cross country coach at Milwaukee Marquette to help his wife with her second battle with ovarian cancer. He spent 37 years in the cross country program at the school and 45 years overall coaching the sport.
“I just can’t be away from home that much anymore,” he said. “I’ll still teach, but I’m giving up the after school stuff reluctantly, but you have to do what you have to do.”
Kearney, 74, won five Wisconsin Independent Schools Athletic Association state titles at University School before adding 11 more from 1982-’99 at Marquette.
After WISAA disbanded and private schools joined the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association in 2000, Kearney led Marquette to state runner-up finishes in 2009 and ’10. His teams qualified for state in 13 of 16 seasons.
Twenty-seven times Marquette won Metro or Greater Metro conference titles.
It was a pretty good run for a guy who grew up playing hockey in Minnesota and started his coaching career with his sights on working in track and field and football. In fact, he didn’t coach cross country at his first two stops, LeRoy-Ostrander in southern Minnesota or Milwaukee Washington.
It wasn’t until he got to University School in 1970 that he got pulled into the sport.
“I thought runners were crazy. I was going to coach football at University School and they didn’t need a football coach my first year up there, so the headmaster asked if I’d coach cross country,” Kearney recalled. “(I said) I don’t know anything about cross country. He said, ‘Well you coach track’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I coach hurdlers.’ He didn’t care. He just wanted a body.”
Kearney coached cross country every year but one since then. The Wisconsin Cross Country Coaches Association inducted him into its hall of fame in 1995.
Kearney’s retirement marks the end for one of the school’s iron men of coaching. He was the hockey co-head coach with Gordie Stafford from 1988-’97 and 19992001. Kearney was also an assistant track coach from 1980-’97.
For 15 years, he coached a sport in the fall, winter and spring seasons at Marquette. If you count the time he put in at other schools as well as his time as a youth hockey coach, Kearney said he coached all three seasons of the school year for 35 years.
The lessons transcended the sport.
“My focus was to try to get them to learn things that would benefit them in life,” he said. “The idea of teamwork. The idea of sacrifice. The idea of being honest and upright and playing fair, being the best you can through hard work, dedication and just being tough.”
Kearney has no plans to retire from teaching, though. A teacher of English literature, he plans to be at his desk at the start of the next school year, his 39th at Marquette and 53rd overall.
“It’s something I love to do,” he said. “I would retire if there were something else that I thought would be enriching and something I could throw myself into. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than teach, to be honest.”