Young and Inexperienced Track Teams Head To State Championships

As a student at Middletown High School, Josh Rosek was a free safety on the football team and a hurdler and a member of the indoor and outdoor relays teams, all coached by his father, Richard. The elder Rosek also taught physical education at MHS, retiring in 2002 after a career spanning more than 35 years. 

After earning a degree in Exercise Science and playing four years of football at Bridgewater State, Josh returned home to work as a permanent substitute teacher at Middletown High. Not one to enjoy a lot of free time, Josh also completed the requirements for a teaching certificate from Springfield College and spent five years on the sidelines with his father as an assistant football coach.

Josh joined the Berlin High staff seven years ago as a physical education and health teacher. He’s had little down time during those seven years, serving as an assistant football coach, head indoor track coach and an assistant outdoor track coach. He managed a quick breather, taking the 2010 outdoor track season off, but will be back working with the Redcoats this spring.

After finishing the 2010 football season as the Berlin High defensive coordinator, Josh gave himself a day off.  He then slipped seamlessly into the indoor track season. “I think I took a nap on my day off,” he laughed. “I don’t like free time.  I’m the type of guy who likes to keep myself busy. I get bored quickly, so I got right back at it after my day off.” 

Josh calls the 2011-2012 Redcoats, “a young team with a lot of inexperience. One of the things that’s tough about indoor track is the lack of venues, which means a lack of meets.  There’s not a lot for young kids. A lot of the meets are high level, with qualifying marks.  If you don’t make those qualifying marks, there’s a real limit to the opportunities for young kids to participate. Because we have a young team, we’re really limited to the amount of meets that a lot of our kids can attend. 

“We’ve been pretty good the last few years and we graduated a lot, but we returned a core of 12-14 kids who are pretty competitive on the state level,” he said of the 56 boys and 38 girls representing BHS indoor track. “We just wrapped up our CCC conference championship meet two weekends ago at the Hillhouse High School Athletic Facility.  One highlight was Jimmy Nolan, our pole-vaulter, beating 31 other competitors. Ras Morgan finishing second out of 32 competitors in the 55 meters was also a big accomplishment for us. 

“There are four CCC divisions, each with eight teams for indoor track, so they put all 32 teams together to compete at one meet. It’s impossible to run four different meets – there are not enough weekends. Hillhouse, Yale and Wesleyan are about the only places you can hold a meet. 

“Kate Piotrowicz, our shot putter, finished fifth out of 32 at the CCC Meet,” Josh continued.  “The first six finishers in an event score points, so our girls’ 4 x 800 relay team - Stephanie Parillo, Nicole Sylvain, Kaylene Sylvain and Alex Carbonell – was close with a seventh-place finish.”

Richard Rosek and a volunteer assistant complete the three-man BHS staff. “This keeps Dad busy. Mom likes to push him out of the house in the afternoon.  He’s basically the brains behind the program.  He’s won multiple state championships as the track coach at Middletown, so I’m soaking up his knowledge and relaying it to our kids.”

The unusually cold and snowy winter has not been kind to the ’Coats. “We practice right after school. We do all of our warm-ups inside, but if the weather is okay, we’re outside.  Once Christmas rolled around and all the snow storms started, we’ve had to stay inside and make do with what we have, using the hallways and the cafeteria once we move the tables.”

Josh calls the BHS weight room “a large part of our program. There are a lot of advantages to weight training.  The girls do the same workout as the boys. (Football) Coach Capodice and I spent a lot of time doing research and then meeting with a couple of college coaches to come up with a program we thought was beneficial for high school students. It incorporates all the components of fitness, like muscular endurance, cardio, flexibility and muscular strength.”

The Redcoats will join close to 40 teams this weekend at Hillhouse for the State Class M Meet. “Hand of Madison, New London and Hillhouse are among the better squads that will be there,” according to Josh.

“You can win a class meet with a small group of competitors as long as they score very high.  It’s how many you can place in the top six positions, so it’s not necessary to bring a lot of athletes. I’m looking for Jimmy and Ras to hopefully fall in the top six. Our relay teams are ranked in the top 15 and are a few seconds away from being able to score, so they’ll have to push themselves. A couple of seconds can be the difference between finishing sixth and finishing 18th.”