‘Never met anyone like Mongo’
Legendary Greenwich coach Bill Mongovan dies at 78
Legendary Greenwich cross country, indoor track and outdoor track and field coach Bill Mongovan died Monday, leaving a massive hole not just in Greenwich, but across the state running world. He was 78.
Mongovan coached indoor track, cross country, and girls track and field at both Greenwich High and St. Mary's of Greenwich for 55 years. Mongovan had 431 cross country wins and 731 victories overall and was inducted into the FCIAC Hall of Fame in 2005.
He is recalled by friends and colleagues as a kind, gentle and endlessly knowledgeable raconteur.
Jim Gerweck coached track and cross country at Wilton for more than 40 years and ran the FCIAC Championship meet every year with assistance from Mongovan.
“When looking at what he did, there is going to be a huge void on the local level, state level and beyond,” Gerweck said. “He was really a legend of the sport in terms of longevity and the breadth of his involvement. I don’t think that term is unjustified in describing him.”
Gerweck also remembered Mongovan as one of the pioneers of girls track at the high school level, seeing it grow from a club sport to full varsity status.
“When he first started, girls high school track was pretty much nonexistent,” Gerweck said. “It was pretty much a glorified intramural sport. He had the Gateway Track Club which was all girls, so he was an early and longtime supporter of girls track pre-title nine. He was a fairly important part of the growth of female running in the state.”
He was still assisting the cross country team at Greenwich this past fall, continuing to have a positive influence on athletes.
Over the last 15 years, current Greenwich cross country and track coach Evan Dubin would spend at least two hours a day, six days a week with Mongovan coaching cross country, indoor and outdoor track
“I never met anyone like Mongo. Never have and never will, he was truly one-of-a-kind. A Greenwich legend,” Dubin said. “If you think about coaching cross country, indoor and outdoor track for over 50 years and all the kids and all the parents he had an impact on, it’s incredible. If you walked down the street in Greenwich, five out of 10 people you stopped would know Mongo. My words can’t do him justice.”
Dubin knew if he ever needed a question about running answered, Mongovan was the person to ask.
“The man was an encyclopedia of track and field knowledge,” Dubin said. “He not only had an answer for any question I had but he would have story to go along with it. He was a tremendous resource of knowledge. He also cared about everyone he came across and he treated everyone with the same kindness. He was kind and generous and would stop and talk to everyone.”
Greenwich athletic director Gus Lindine said it is hard to put a career like Mongovan’s into words that properly represent what he meant, not just to Greenwich but the running world.
In addition to his responsibilities at Greenwich, Mongovan ran, officiated and timed running events throughout the state and on a national level.
“It’s a very sad day for all of us. The man was recognized by the FCIAC, state and nationally as someone who was at the top of the track world,” Lindine said. “He touched so many studentathletes lives over the years. He was such a kind, gentle person and was always good to see. He was one of the hardest working guys in the world. He would show up midday to set up a meet, dragging hurdles out onto the track and everything else. Then he’d still be out there after dark tabulating scores and putting everything away.”
FCIAC Commissioner Dave Schulz said Mongovan was always teaching, even when he could not do it in person over the last few months.
“Bill always wanted to pass on knowledge to younger coaches. We run coaches modules on Zoom and he would be on every single one and at the end of each one he had some words of wisdom for the other coaches,” Schulz said. “He loved the sport. He was even at novice races this fall, he would come to every race he could. For as long as I have been around the FCIAC, Bill was running the cross country meets, the indoor meets, the outdoor meets. He just loved it.”
Dave Fierro covered sports for Hearst Connecticut Media’s Greenwich Time for 17 years and spent many hours at cross country courses or track meets with Mongovan.
Many spring evenings, Fierro and Mongovan would be the last two people left on the Greenwich track as Mongovan tabulated all the scored by hand, often in the dark.
Fierro last saw him this past fall at the FCIAC West Championships in New Canaan.
“I spent a lot of time talking to him at the FCIAC West Championships at Waveny recently and at the team’s regular season meets,” Fierro said. “He was a wealth of information when it came to track and field and cross country. He was the head coach at Greenwich for decades in both track and field and cross country and in recent years, as he got older, was an assistant coach, but still did so much. From my personal experience, he was always one of the first people at the track and cross country meets and one of the last, if not the last to leave. He did so
much in setting everything up. Even at his advanced age at this last FCIAC West Meet.”
At meets, Mongovan would open the back of his van and unload everything needed for any meet.
“We used to joke that he had an entire track meet in the back of his van,” Gerweck said. “He would always wheel out all kinds of equipment and his van was packed with it. I can’t think of any track related stuff that he didn’t own.”
Mongovan was born in Bangor, Maine in 1942. He spent his early school years in Philadelphia and split his high school years between LaSalle High School in Philadelphia and Seton-LaSalle High School in Pittsburgh.
He was introduced to the sport of track and field as a seventhgrader at Norwood Academy in Philadelphia. When members of his physical education class were taken to the Penn Relays in April 1955, Mongovan suddenly lost his interest in baseball and found track and field. Little did he realize that it would be part of him for the rest of his life.
In 2005, 50 years later, he took two relay teams from Greenwich High School to run in the Penn Relays.
While in high school he added the fall sport of cross country and raced on both sides of the state of Pennsylvania. He attended St. Francis University, majoring in history and secondary education, graduating in 1964. He did his Masters work at the University of Maine in history and political science.
Mongovan spent his first year teaching at Van Buren District High School in Maine, where he started a cross country program in the fall and a track and field program in the spring. After one year in Maine, he moved to Greenwich to accept a social studies teaching position at St. Mary's High School — a position he held until the school closed in 1990.
Mongovan added cross country and winter track to St. Mary's spring track program, achieved great success in the Thruway League as well as the small school division of the CIAC.
After coming to Greenwich in 1965, Mongovan made contact with the state AAU (now USA Track & Field), and through the years has served in many capacities. He served as president for 14 years and later as the vice president and Youth and Athletics chairman.
Another of Mongovan's interests in the sport was officiating, where he held a Masters status.
He annually officiated at most of the major high school meets in the state. He has also officiated at the 1995 World Special Olympics, the 1987 Pan-American games; the World Para-Olympics in Atlanta in 1996, as well as numerous collegiate track and field meets throughout the eastern U.S.
He also served as chief of weights and measures for the Penn Relays for more than 25 years. Mongovan also held the position of Northeast (Region 1) Coordinator for the Junior Olympics. He also oversaw a summer track program and a fall cross-country program that hosts a state and regional meet and ended with a national meet each year.