McLoone returns to the Shore running scene

BY TIM MORRIS
Staff Writer

MIGUEL JUAREZ staff Rumson-Fair Haven cross country coach Tim McLoone reads through a recent article on his team in The Hub, a Greater Media newspaper, during a practice at Meadow Ridge Park in Fair Haven. Training partners talk about a lot of things while they are running together.

One of the topics that Tim McLoone and Henry Mercer would occasionally touch upon was coaching.

"Sometimes when we'd go out for a run, we talked about what it would be like to coach in high school," said McLoone.

Neither expected anything to come of what they considered to be just curiosity.

All of that has changed for McLoone and Mercer. They no longer have to wonder what it would be like to coach.

They are the co-head coaches of the Rumson-Fair Haven High School boys and girls cross country teams, and loving it.

The opportunity arrived last year when there was a coaching vacancy for boys cross country at RFH. With a lot of encouragement from McLoone's daughter Molly, now a senior at Rumson, who wanted her father to try it, McLoone and Mercer talked it over and decided to do it.

This year, they are coaching both squads with positive results.

Their runners, both boys and girls, have been consistently running personal bests and the girls are in good position to win the public schools Shore Conference A Central Division title.

They are currently 4-1 with one dual meet remaining. The girls have won divisional titles at the Cougar and Old Bridge Invitationals as well.

"Almost all of the kids have made huge breakthroughs," McLoone pointed out.

When he was a child of the 1960s, running in high school [Seton Hall Prep] and college [Harvard], the last thing that McLoone, restaurant owner, musician and entrepreneur, thought he'd ever be was a coach. What drove him and Mercer to it?

"It's the affection that Henry and I have for the sport," he said.

You can add the affection they have developed for their runners.

"Virtually every coach knows that the kids in cross country are the nicest kids," he said.

"I'm surprised at how emotionally involved I am with the kids."

Mercer has been pleasantly surprised as well.

"I find the kids far more committed than I thought," he remarked.

McLoone did get a taste of coaching back in 1985, doing it as a favor when he filled in for one season as the head coach of Mater Dei's boys cross country team.

"Sue Caffrey reached out to me," he said. "It was a seasoned group that had won the Parochial B state championship."

When he joined the Seraphs, McLoone thought the team had set its goals too low, so he entered Mater Dei in the Easterns at Van Cortlandt Park, where the Seraphs were hammered.

But, it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to the Seraphs. It fired the squad up and they would go on to repeat as Parochial B champions.

That was it for coaching, or so he thought. Opportunity knocked last year and spurred on by his daughter, he's back with his training partner restoring the RFH program.

McLoone's biggest running influences were his high school coach at Seton Hall Prep, Bill Persicketty, and college coach, Harvard's Bill McCurdy.

"He [Persicketty] taught me athletics right and wrong," said McLoone.

"Bill McCurdy was a huge man in my life. He helped me mature. I absorbed what they told me."

Now that he is coaching, McLoone has taken a little something from the both of them.

"We do programs I borrowed from my coaches," he said.

"Both believed that you have to train fast to run fast.

"I take the University of Oregon [Bill Bowerman] hard day, easy day approach," he added.

McLoone also takes a slightly different view on cross country, where pack running is encouraged because of the team nature of the sport.

The closer a team's runners are to each other time-wise, the better the team score will be.

McLoone, however, believes that that doesn't necessarily bring out the best in a runner. Running, by it nature, is individual.

"[Pack running] guarantees holding back," he said.

One aspect of the individual nature of running is that McLoone and Mercer hold the individuals accountable for themselves.

"We treat them like college kids," he said. "I don't take attendance."

The Bulldogs, who do a lot of their training at Meadow Ridge Park near the school, have been making substantial progress under McLoone and Mercer.

The goal is not short term, however. It is to make the cross country program a traditional winner. McLoone knows that there is more work to be done.

"There are two issues," he said. No. 1, cross country has to have charisma to it. You have to attract the athletes who are playing lacrosse and field hockey.

"Second, you have to have a culture of success that the kids will buy into.

Early returns are that the Bulldogs are making progress on both fronts.

Mercer, who runs a money management firm locally, did not run in high school [Lawrenceville Prep] or college [Tulane University].

He picked it up right out of college while working in the city.

"I was living in New York City, just out of college and out of shape," he recalled.

"They had races in Central Park in the late 70s and Bill Rodgers was in his prime. He inspired me. Running has become a part of my life."

Mercer would become a top age group runner through his career which would lead eventually to his friendship with another runner named Tim McLoone, who was one of the Shore area's top road runners during the early running boom in the late 1970s and early 80s. They were training partners at first, and then, close friends.

Their different backgrounds, he believes, have meshed well.

"It's a nice mix of things," said Mercer.

"He knows the nuts and bolts of what high school and college training is about. I know a lot about injuries and getting ready emotionally for a race."

McLoone likes to quote the late Dr. George Sheehan who said that "running isn't important, but it has meaning."

If the Bulldogs absorb that, McLoone will have done his best coaching.