The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Roy reflects as he nears retirement
STORRS — Thirty-seven years into his UConn career and weeks from retirement, Greg Roy spends part of each day looking into the past. It’s not only that he’s feeling particularly emotional and nostalgic, but because can’t avoid the view.
When Roy, UConn’s director of cross country and track & field, peeks through the blinds of his office window and into Greer Fieldhouse, he sees current members of the
Huskies track teams coming and going. He also sees basketball teams and baseball teams from another era — vivid memories from the chaos of a joint operation that was the foundation for an athletic department’s rise.
Back in the mid-tolate-1980s, before construction of Gampel Pavilion and countless “UConn 2000” initiatives changed the campus landscape, the teams of Geno Auriemma and Jim Calhoun would play and
practice in the Fieldhouse.
Andy Baylock’s baseball team would be taking batting practice in cages beyond the bleachers. The track used by Roy’s team encased all this activity, a no-elbow-room training environment to bemoan then and look back fondly upon now.
“It was a zoo in here,” Roy said, laughing. “Our kids knew how to duck when somebody took a swing before they cut into lane one. Or maybe you’re coming down the straightway and a basketball would roll over the end court, hit the curtain, go out to lane one and ... smash!”
Of course, those other teams had to deal with the crackle of gunfire that signaled the start of running races.
“Dee Rowe used to say Kennedy would hit the gun and his guys would hit the deck,” said Roy, referring to a previous coach, Robert Kennedy. “It was insane. So to go from that to, you look at the athletic [facilities] now, it’s just light years. I’m more than proud. It’s been an honor to be part of it and incredible to witness it and to have my role, though I was just along for the ride contributing in some small way.”
Roy announced in early March, a week after the Huskies won men’s and women’s team titles at the Big East Indoor Championships in Chicago, that he would retire after the spring outdoor season. He had come to the decision long ago — before suffering a stroke and undergoing two heart surgeries in 2021.
It was just time, for many reasons.
In a couple of weeks, Roy won’t be recruiting. He’ll be home in Lebanon with wife Natalie, landscaping on 26 acres that sits between two dairy farms. He’ll focus on being a husband and a father and a grandfather. When he chooses to travel, it will be to the family’s house in Cape May, N.J.
The homestretch is upon him. Roy will coach a team competition for the last time May 13-14 at the Big East Outdoor Track & Field Championship, on the Storrs campus. That UConn is hosting makes for a proper send-off, and both Huskies’ teams are favored to win.
Roy, looking for his 19th and 20th conference championships, will undoubtedly have some individuals qualify for NCAA preliminaries May 25-28 in Bloomington, Ind., and maybe the NCAA Championship June 8-11 in Eugene, Ore. But his days of coaching UConn as a team, one he turned into a Big East power over the past 30-plus formative years, is down to two days.
“I love the competition, I love the sport and I love the kids,” Roy said. “And the sport is all about the kids, so it’s been perfect.”
He knew it would be, really. Roy grew up in New Jersey, graduated from Rochester with degrees in geology and biology and landed a job as a science teacher at Thomas Stone High in Waldorf, Md., after graduation in 1978. There, he was asked to coach junior varsity soccer. He led half of one practice and knew what he wanted to do with the rest of his professional life.
“I get goose bumps just thinking about it,” Roy said. “I saw those kids wanting to do something, and I was helping them do that, and it was magic. I floated home.”
Roy called his college track coach, Tim Hale.
“I said, ‘How do I do this?’ ” Roy recalls. “I said, I’m going to be a college coach, just like you.”
At Hale’s suggestion, Roy enrolled at UMass a couple years later, working toward a master’s degree in sport management. He spent two years after graduation as an assistant track coach for the Minutemen, two more as the field coach at Bucknell, and arrived at UConn in 1985 — the same year as Auriemma.
Roy, initially UConn’s cross country head coach and a track & field assistant, was named men’s track and field coach in 1989. He became the director for both programs when the men and women merged under the same umbrella in 2019.
Some trying complications were about to be sprinkled into the job.
The men’s track program feared being on the chopping block while UConn considered a ballooning athletic deficit. Roy and his staff and supporters focused intensely on fundraising and means of survival. Ultimately, four sports were cut, but track & field survived, jumping that hurdle — right into the pandemic.
“The last three years, in case you’ve been out of the country or off the planet, have been crazy,” Roy said.
Roy is youthful looking, energetic, set to turn 66 in June. His son, Mike, who ran hurdles at UConn, lives in New York and is a fashion designer. His daughter, Katie, remains in Connecticut and is a nurse, married with two children.
That’s what he’ll soon enjoy, full-time: family. He’s been running a race for 37 years, full-speed. The stroke, suffered in February 2021, slowed him only temporarily. Same goes for the heart surgeries — “plumbing and electrical work,” he said, to address aortic stenosis and atrial fibrillation — performed in April and August of 2021.
“I feel really good,” Roy said. “I was lucky. But it also gives you perspective.”
The lobby of the track & field office features pictures of All-American Dan Wilson finishing off UConn’s historic victory in the distance medley relay at the 2000 Penn Relays, outlasting runners from Tennessee, Arkansas, Ohio State.
The Huskies set a school record for the event that day, finishing in 9:33.02, which stood until this year’s Penn Relays two weeks ago. The team of Joseph Pearl (of Manchester), Wellington Ventura, Mahamed Sharif and Eric Van Der Els (Norwalk) finished in 9:30.31, good for third behind Ole Miss and Wisconsin.
That’s where Roy has taken the program, from dodging errant baseballs and basketballs in the Fieldhouse to running alongside the nation’s top programs. There’s barely any room on his office walls, with various championship plaques surrounding that window to his past.
Roy remembers UConn president Harry Hartley’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Athletics in the 80s and 90s, the formation of the Student Athlete Success Program, the dreams of many programs being harnessed and then buttressed by each other’s energy.
One meet remains. UConn has 11 men’s athletes and five women’s athletes ranked first in Big East events. A party is planned afterward.
“To think about not going to practice or planning for the next year, it’s different,” Roy said. “But you’ve got to look at your timeline and what you want to accomplish in life. I didn’t want to be coaching at 70. I’ve seen the transformation from a tired, worn-out, land grant, agricultural school to a world class university. Just amazing to be a part of that.”