BHS and Bernardsville native alum from the class of 1971 Mark Wetmore, has been the head track coach at Colorado University at Boulder for twenty years. He is Wetmore’s teams have won six team championships between 2014 and 2000. He is the only coach in the Division 1 to have won all four cross country titles at the same school and has coached 55 individual conference champions.
What were some of your favorite classes or activities that you participated in?
I was a lazy, uninterested, wise-ass student (which I came to regret). Gym class was pretty good, especially when I could get Coach Kopp mad enough at me to send me out to run laps. I looked forward to lunch of course, such as it was. Mostly though, I liked clowning my friends, looking at and (very) occasionally talking to girls, and being on the Cross Country and Track teams. But let me go back a bit to the “regret” part. I had a BHS classmate/teammate/friend, Chris Cavaluzzo. He matriculated at Yale. I visited him there a few times, and hung out with him and his new Yale friends…who were all brilliant! The two hundred year old stone buildings…the ivy (literally) covered walls… the library made out of translucent marble…18 year olds arguing about Kierkegaard… I just kept thinking, “Man, I blew it!”
Who were some of your favorite teachers at BHS?
Well, Ed Mather, the Cross Country and Track coach, had a big effect on my life, but he was never one of my teachers. So the teachers I most remember were Ron Barnard, a science teacher, and William Guthrie, my senior English teacher. Neither were successful at teaching me much academically, but both nudged me towards useful self-discoveries. I know Bill Guthrie has passed away, but maybe Mr. Barnard is still around somewhere. (If you are, Thanks!)
Is there anything that you learned at BHS that prepared you better for your career as a track coach?
When I arrived at BHS, the only sports experience I had was in Wrestling. Ed Mather talked me out for freshman Cross Country by suggesting that it would get me in shape for Wrestling. But what I (we) immediately learned was that sport could be something more than drudgery and yelling. Ed made it all fun. We worked harder than any other team we knew of (which I think is true of the Colorado teams), but somehow it was lighthearted and fun along the way. Ron Barnard and Bill Guthrie taught me non-sports, life lessons, but, of course, those end up sports lessons eventually.
Do you keep in touch with any staff currently working for the school?
I am afraid not. I doubt there is anyone left from that time. My high school friend Joe LaSpada still works in the school system as a soccer coach, and I have some other buddies from that era who live in the area and we check in with each other periodically. The very successful Football coach of that time (1970 State champs!), Gerry Keller, lives in the Denver area now. He and a wrestling coach from BHS slightly after my time, came by a C.U. Cross Country race in November of ’13. I was surprised and flattered!
Wetmore added, “You didn’t ask about this, but I have a responsibility to say that I had a wonderful time in Bernardsville and at BHS. It really was innocent and nurturing. So many great friends, dozens really, and interesting, odd-character teachers and administrators. I wish I was a playwrite.”
He jokingly said, “I would write something that wasn’t smug or snide about high school, maybe comedic, but certainly evocative of a golden, safe time. But it sorta has already. That movie “American Graffitti” is a decent representation of what things were like for us then.”
What drew your attention to the University of Colorado?
Boulder had a long tradition of excellent distance runners. I came out here in 1991 “on spec”, just guessing that I might get something going. The idea then though was that it would be something on a club level Also, I knew that Boulder was a cool place to live.
Did you coach anywhere previously?
I was a club coach in Bernardsville from 1972 until 1988, and an assistant to both Ed Mather and Bob Mount at B.H.S. From ’88 until ’91 I was the distance coach at Seton Hall University.
