It may come as a surprise to those who have come to know the decades-long success of the Hershey cross country team, but the program very nearly met its demise before it even had a chance to get going.
The year was 1977, and the Trojans were in need of a coach. Without anyone to guide the squad, the message wasn’t stated directly, but the writing was on the wall: Hershey cross country was on the verge of being cut.
As pressure mounted, the plea for a new coach reached the ears of Al Fricke, a fresh-faced Philadelphia native who had been hired two years prior as the school’s physical education teacher and baseball coach. Admittedly clueless about the sport of cross country and not even a runner himself, Fricke decided to take one for the team, applying for the job just to keep the program afloat until it could find some stability.
After 48 years under the successful leadership of that unlikely cross country coach, it’s safe to say Hershey’s program is in a stable place and then some. And following a surprise retirement announcement at this fall’s season-ending team banquet, that’s how Fricke will leave the program.
As Fricke put it, when the success started feeling less exciting and more like a relief, it was time to move on.
“When you get older, your perspective changes some, and I found myself putting pressure and stress on myself, because I’ve done it so long with success,” Fricke said. “There’s an expectation to just keep doing it.
“Being around the kids is the best thing. It keeps you young. I’ll miss the kids, but it was time.”
The expectation, and subsequent delivery, of greatness from the Trojans’ cross country program has become so routine over the decades that the sheer numbers of it all can bring about a yawn. Don’t believe us? Try reading through this abbreviated list of Hershey’s achievements without skimming through: 53 Mid-Penn Keystone Division titles, including 10 straight for the girls and five in a row for the boys, nine Mid-Penn Conference titles, five District 3 championships, 25 PIAA medalists and one PIAA team champion.
‘I’ll Give it a Shot’
It’s quite an extensive resume for a coach whose career began with taking a leap of faith into a sport he did not know.
“Listen, I’m not trying to make myself the hero here, I was just a guy who had nothing going on, plus my future wife, Carol, was the middle school cross country coach,” Fricke said. “I just said, OK, I’ll give it a shot, but in reality, I knew nothing.”
Without the benefit of technology or even an instruction booklet, Fricke was forced to “ad lib” his way through the beginning stages of running a cross country squad. While gradually learning the sport from the kids and coaches, Fricke focused on what he did know: building up athletes.
“For all that goes into cross country, it still comes down to kids working hard, trusting the process and wanting to compete,” Fricke said.
“When you’re in the middle of the race shoulder to-shoulder with another runner, you can have a plan in place, but at your core, you want to be a competitor.”
With one year in the books and a growing love and appreciation for the sport, Fricke decided to stay with the program and continue to develop the culture. He was inspired to stick with it thanks to the high competitive drive of his cross country runners. Born from this partnership was a program of athletes who could camouflage any perceived lack of knowledge from the head coach by running through walls for him.
As the intricacies of cross country began to click for Fricke, who eventually became a runner himself, the state of Hershey’s program also grew.
The Trojans nailed down their first division title in 1983, and that’s when momentum really started flowing.
“I don’t care what the sport is, you have to have a bond with the kids,” Fricke said. “If the kids think you care, they’ll do anything for you. Even to this day, there are other coaches who know more than me, but I was able to have some success because of the rapport with the team.
“This cross country family was a big deal, and kids, for some reason, wanted to be a part of it.”
‘You Can’t Take it Away’
Hershey was a well-oiled machine by the end of the 80s, and after falling just short of a state title in 1989, Fricke’s boys got the job done in 1990. With a squad led by the late Tim Russell – one of the namesakes for the wildly-popular Ben & Tim Day in Hershey – the Trojans captured the state 2A crown. According to Fricke, everything that could have went right that day on Penn State’s Blue Course, went even better.
“That was a very special time, I could tell you minute by-minute what happened that day,” Fricke said. “Once you win states, you can’t take it away, I don’t care what year it is. Those boys are still talking about it to this day.
“It was just our day. Our kids ran so well, two boys got medals and our fifth kid ran so well to push us to the top.”
The successes continued to pile up for Fricke’s Trojans through the 90s and into the 2000s. Even after he retired in 2010 as a teacher and Hall of Fame baseball coach, the drive to stay with the cross country team was strong as ever. One of Fricke’s favorite parts of the job has been watching his athletes grow from “kids doing cross country” to fullfledged runners. It was a transformation that Fricke went through himself, as he personally picked up running and stuck with the sport until arthritis eventually forced a switch to biking.
Fricke calls running, as well as wrestling, the hardest two high school sports.
“There’s no smoke and mirrors in this sport,” Fricke said. “There’s no officials and no ball. You can’t hide. It’s a semi-sprint for 3.1 miles, and if it doesn’t work out, it’s on you.”
Now that Fricke’s hanging up the whistle for good, he admits that he has no idea what his win-loss record is, nor do those numbers mean all that much to him. There is, however, one figure that Fricke holds in the utmost regard: 2,300. That’s the estimated number of runners who have competed under his tutelage. Fricke says he would have achieved nothing had it not been for those runners and the many great coaches he’s worked with, including Steve Koons, who helped hammer out the “Xs and Os” of running for the program.
You can now find Fricke on the golf course, where the 72-year-old aims to continue to work on his game. Fricke’s also making fall travel plans with his wife, something he hasn’t been able to do since the mid-’70s.
Fricke uses the word “lucky” to describe his life in Hershey.
“I was so lucky, so blessed, to get hired by Hershey and Derry Township School District,” Fricke said. “It allowed me to find my love of teaching and coaching and the love of my life, my wife Carol.
“As a kid coming in from center city Philly, I could not have asked for more. This place (Hershey) is unbelievable.”
Read more at: https://news.thesunontheweb.com/articles/al-fricke-calls-it-a-career/
