Bromages set to retire
Husband-wife coaching duo call it quits
Cookie and Bob Bromage, who together combined for 106 years of coaching field hockey, baseball and basketball at Enfield and East Granby High Schools, have announced their retirements.
“I’ve been thinking about it when the season ended, through the winter,” Cookie said. “Each day it would be on my mind. I said, ‘This is it. I’m 76 years old. I don’t get to [their house in] Maine in the fall. Maybe it’s time to spend some time in Maine in the fall.’ Bob was thinking the same thing.”
Cookie, who coached for 52 years, all at Enfield, won state titles in field hockey in 1983 and 1984 and again from 1992-94 and is one of the state’s a l l - t i me w i n n i n g e s t coaches in the sport. She also coached basketball for 18 years and cheerleading for 10 years.
Although she never kept track of her exact coaching record, she had close to 400 wins after the 2015 season and over the last three years, since the merger of Enfield and Fermi high schools, her teams went 49-5-2 and advanced to the semifinals of the Class L tournament twice and the quarterfinals last fall, losing 3-2 to Newtown.
Her husband Bob, who coached baseball at East Granby and Enfield, spent 54 years coaching and has over 500 wins. The two met in the athletic office at Enfield High in 1966 and got married three years later. Bob was a math teacher; Cookie was a physical education teacher. Together, they influenced generations of athletes and students at both Enfield and East Granby and have coached their former players’ children.
“It was a wonderful job I had,” Cookie said. “I student-taught there. I got the job. I was never anywhere else. I loved every minute of it.
“I started the program. I was the only coach they ever had. It’s hard to leave something that’s such a part of my life - the friends I’ve made over the years, my coaching buddies, the kids have all been great kids.”
Some of the athletes they coached included E.O. Smith’s John Blomstrann, a 1972 Enfield High graduate who holds the all-time record for soccer coaching victories in the state and 1974 Enfield High grad Kate Mullen, who just completed her 27th year as the Wesleyan women’s basketball coach.
Cookie had numerous friends in the coaching community and was an annual presence on the sidelines of the state championship games, helping out if she wasn’t coaching.
“The moment I heard that Carol Channing voice, we immediately became friends,” long-time North Branford field hockey coach Babby Nuhn said of Cookie. “She will be ridiculously, sorely missed.”
Both Bob and Cookie are in the Enfield Hall of Fame and Cookie is a member of the National High School Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame, the Connecticut Field Hockey Hall of Fame and the Connecticut High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
“Maybe it’s time to spend some time in Maine in the fall.” — Former Enfield and East Granby sports coach Cookie Bromage