Accomplished College Coach Giving Back to HS Track at Salem
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
April 23, 2021
PINCKNEY – John Goodridge has coached athletes of just about every level imaginable.
"My passion for coaching is just as high as ever,” said Goodridge, 72, recently named the head boys track & field coach at Salem High School in Canton. “It’s been fun. You really do come full circle.”
It’s been a tremendous coaching journey over the past 50 years for Goodridge, a New York City native. It was not long after retiring from Eastern Michigan University in the fall that Goodridge got the coaching bug again. It started when he began attending cross country meets in the Ann Arbor area. Soon he realized he wanted to continue coaching and spoke to one of his former EMU athletes who was coaching at Salem and had found out the job as boys track coach was going to be open.
"At some point, late in my career, I had the notion that someday I’d come back and coach high school, where it all started,” Goodridge said. “In the fall, after I retired, an EMU alum who coached at Pinckney High School invited me to his home opening cross country meet.
"It was enough being out there and seeing the young kids that it brought me back to 40-50 years ago. I spent the fall, every week, going to various local cross country meets. Just observing, just to see if I thought it was something I wanted to do.”
Ultimately, Salem athletic director Tim Baechler hired Goodridge, who has an incredible resume as a track & field and cross country coach. From coaching Olympic athletes to the United States team at the World University Cross Country Championships in Austria, Goodridge has coached world class athletes and NCAA championship-level contenders for decades.
High school coaches have always had a special place in Goodridge’s heart. One reason is he interacted with coaches from across the country while recruiting athletes to compete for him at Michigan State University (1979-1982), Wake Forest University (1984-1999) and Eastern Michigan (2001-2020). Another reason is that he started out coaching at that level.
"It’s natural,” he said. “A lot of people think college is a higher level and that kind of stuff, but I’ve always told people that being a high school coach is such an important role and opportunity to work with young people.
"In many cases it’s the most special relationship. A high school coach sets the tone. You are introducing the sport to young kids. That’s quite a responsibility.”
Goodridge graduated from Long Island University in 1972. He and wife Francie (Kraker) met in the northeast while working for a shoe company. They returned to her native Ann Arbor while she was an elite world class athlete. Francie ran on U.S. Olympic teams in 1968 and 1972 and owned a world record in 1967.
While in grad school, Francie was offered the position of track coach at Ann Arbor Huron but couldn’t accept it because she was still an amateur athlete and couldn’t profit from that status and remain eligible for the Olympics.
Instead, she suggested to the Huron athletic director that the school hire her husband. His coaching career was launched.
"We were two young people, trying to get through school on part-time jobs,” Goodridge said. “We didn’t even have a car. (Coaching) was a source of income.”
While coaching high school track, they also coached younger athletes on club squads, before moving to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where they both were hired as coaches – Francie as the women’s track coach and John the men’s. After a short stint there, they returned to Ann Arbor and both took on roles at Ann Arbor Greenhills.
Both coached for years. Goodridge had a long tenure at Wake Forest, coaching both cross country and track & field at a time when the Demon Deacons had unparalleled success in school history with 14 individual Atlantic Coast Conference champions and seven All-Americans. Francie coached at Wake Forest as well.
The couple returned to Michigan in the early 2000s, with Goodridge taking over the Eastern Michigan cross country program and serving as an assistant track coach. He later became the head track coach. During his time at Ypsilanti, he directed numerous Eagles squads in both sports to conference titles. During his distinguished career, he coached conference cross country championship teams in the Mid-American, Big Ten and Atlantic Coast Conferences. He was the MAC Coach of the Year 13 times in cross country and coached 22 NCAA track & field All-Americans.
This season he has more than 100 athletes on the Salem boys track & field team. He’s having a blast with it, especially with the freshmen athletes who are just starting out learning about track.
"Some of them may not be the most talented, natural athletes but they want to be part of the team,” he said. “They might not be able to make another team, but they want to be involved in athletics and be on a team. It’s been very intellectually challenging and inspiring to come up with new things for ninth graders, to make it fun and not let them get discouraged.
"They put a smile on my face just about every day. I hope it’s going to be keep me a young 72 and a young 73 and as long as I keep doing this.”
Goodridge also is building relationships with other area coaches. He’s not been afraid to seek out advice.
It’s been a long time since I designed workouts for the young ones,” he said. “It’s fun to sort it out, to my own approach to training, with that age group. All athletes respond differently to training and intensity and what you give them. The age of the athlete is a factor in that. It’s been a long time since I had experience working with freshmen. That’s been fun.”
Doug Donnelly has served as a sports and news reporter and city editor over 25 years, writing for the Daily Chief-Union in Upper Sandusky, Ohio from 1992-1995, the Monroe Evening News from 1995-2012 and the Adrian Daily Telegram since 2013. He's also written a book on high school basketball in Monroe County and compiles record books for various schools in southeast Michigan. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Jackson, Washtenaw, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) John Goodridge, center, retired in the fall from coaching the men’s track & field team at Eastern Michigan University. (Middle) Goodridge also served as coach of the men’s cross country team. (Photos courtesy of the EMU athletic department.)
Clare Boys Hang On for 1st title since 2000
June 2, 2018
By Jeff Bleiler
Special for Second Half
COMSTOCK PARK – For the second straight year, the Lower Peninsula Division 3 boys track & field championship came down to the final race at Comstock Park.
Chesaning was the benefactor last season. On Saturday, it was Clare’s time.
The Pioneers finished third in the 1,600-meter relay, and although Berrien Springs won the event to finish with 42 points, Clare came away with the big team trophy with 44 points. Kent City finished third with 32 points.
Clare’s championship was its first in boys track since 2000, and coach Adam Burhans said he had a handle on the standings throughout most of the day.
“We came in expecting to fight a battle all day with Berrien Springs, Caro, Kent City, and that’s pretty much what happened,” he said. “Where one team would falter, one team would pick up points. I told the team that in this type of scoring, if you get in the realm of 40 points, you’ve got a shot.”
Berrien Springs likely found the outcome mildly shocking as Clare was nowhere in the top four with just three events left. The standings at the point did not account for the points that hadn’t been tallied in the discus, where Clare’s Noah Nivison won with a throw of 156 feet, 7 inches, and teammate Zac Stickler placed sixth. Stickler was also third in the shot put, which were 16 big points in the grand scheme.
But Burhans really has senior Xavier Martin to thank. Martin anchored two of Clare’s three all-state relays – and was the third leg of the other – and finished second in the 200 in 22.54 to Kent City’s Giovanni Weeks (22.36).
Clare was second in the 800 relay in 1:29.64 with junior Jake Hawley, sophomore Colt Smedley and Brenden Sersaw joining Martin; third in the 400 relay in 43.91 with the same group except Sersaw anchored ahead of Martin; and third in the all-important 1,600 relay with Sersaw, Smedley, senior Justin Tickle and Martin in the lineup.
Martin said the team watched Berrien Springs put up a 3:23.42 time in the heat before the Pioneers’ preliminary and knew it had a tough battle.
“It was a lot of pressure,” he said. “We watched them run and were like, ‘Oh my God, that’s a really good time.’”
Needing a finish no worse than fourth to claim the Finals championship, the Pioneers responded in the last boys event of the day.
“It’s a situation kids dream of, to make a last-second shot to win, but it’s not what a coach dreams of,” Burhans said, chuckling.
Elsewhere, Jackson Blanchard had some big shoes to fill at Houghton Lake in terms of the hurdle events. He’s wearing them quite well.
Blanchard, a senior, successfully repeated with championships in the 110 and 300 hurdles, claiming the 110 title in a meet record 14.23 seconds. That eclipsed the time of 14.3 set by Derrick Cook of Muskegon Oakridge in 2003.
Blanchard won the 300 hurdles in 37.79 seconds, beating his nearest opponent (Kalob Bellows of Lake City) by nearly two seconds.
But perhaps more satisfying to Blanchard was that he took down the school records set by his father and hurdling mentor, Thomas Blanchard.
“It is amazing (to win the state titles again),” Blanchard said. “I’m getting chills just thinking about it. Getting the 110 record was really cool, too; an amazing feeling. It’s a shocked, proud feeling. (After I won last year), I told my dad it was my goal to get first again, and that’s what I did.”
The younger Blanchard, who took up the hurdles even semi-seriously only as a sophomore, beat his father’s school record in the 300 that season. He topped the 110 several times this season, punctuated by Saturday’s time. Blanchard’s main focus was golf during the spring sports season, so he rarely practiced for track. As a sophomore, he competed in only the minimum number of meets he needed to qualify for Regionals.
“Imagine what I could do if I practiced,” said Blanchard, who next heads to Central Michigan University to run the 110 and 400 hurdles for the Chippewas.
In the field events, Jacob Ager of Boyne City sat seventh going into the final round of the shot put. On his last attempt, he launched a bomb 59 feet, 11 inches to comfortably win the championship. Jack Boyle of Roscommon was second at 58-1½.
The finish surprised even Ager.
“My first three or four attempts were not that good, but then my coach told me to explode back and focus on the snap at the end, and that’s what I did,” said Ager, whose best put of the day before the winner was 56-1. “It’s a good feeling (to win). I was looking at the rankings and thinking about it. It’s kind of surreal.”
Ager, who also finished 10th in the discus, is heading to Northern Michigan in the fall and will play football.
In the pole vault, Manton senior Zach Flint won after being the only athlete to clear 13 feet, 6 inches. Flint, who entered the meet with a vault of 13-0, failed in his quest to conquer 14 feet but already had first place in his pocket.
“It feels good to finally get a medal at states,” said the senior, who was 14th in Division 4 last season. “I knew I was better than that.”
Flint, who cleared 14-3 on Monday in winning the Cadillac News meet, will vault for Aquinas College in the fall.
Saugatuck junior Corey Gorgas was a double winner on the day, claiming the 1,600 in 4:15.74 and later adding the 3,200 in 9:17.32.
Caro won the 3,200 relay in 8:05.71 with juniors Yami Albrecht, Caleb Cotton, Bryden Miller and Aaron Hulburt.
Junior Caleb Schuette of Grandville Calvin Christian won the 100 in 11.10 seconds, and Hart senior Logan Wells won the 400 in 48.89 seconds. Leslie senior Devin Gibbs won the 800 in 1:55.88.
Sam Spaulding, a junior at Berrien Springs, won the high jump with a 6-7, and Quincy senior Bryce Ruhl won the long jump with a 21-¾.
VIDEO: Blanchard Doubles in D3 Hurdles
PHOTOS: (Top) Clare scored big in relays on the way to its first Finals title since 2000. (Middle) Houghton Lake's Jackson Blanchard pulls away from the field during one of his hurdles victories Saturday. (Photos by Annette Tipton. Click for more from RunMichigan.com.)