High school notes: Griffin retired from St. Bernard but never left

Sue Griffin, as St. Bernard as it gets, retired as the school’s athletic director and happily celebrated at a gathering in July which included several of the school’s greats, including former athletic Art Lamoureux and former cross country coach Mike Doyle.

She retired. And that’s why she had the time to take the position that Don Macrino, St. Bernard’s headmaster, asked her to undertake this fall as a part-time sixth-grade world history and religion teacher.

“You think coaching is difficult,” said Griffin, a member of the St. Bernard Class of 1977, where she led the Saints to three State Open girls’ cross country championships and later coached the school’s girls’ cross country and indoor and outdoor track teams.

“You know me. I have a lot of energy. But you have to read the room. When they’re not into, you’ve got to switch it up fast. You’ve got to have three or four things planned and you get through one or two.”

When Griffin retired, she wasn’t sure what her life would look like. She answered inquiries by saying ”I don’t know. God hasn’t told me yet.“

“That’s kind of how my life is,” Griffin said.

She planned to remain at St. Bernard as a fundraiser. The former Sue Connolly, Griffin met her husband Paul, a member of the St. Bernard Class of 1976, when they both ran cross country. Between her and Paul there are 14 siblings, all St. Bernard graduates.

Who better to fund raise than the two people who know everyone.

“We lived it,” Griffin said this week. “... (St. Bernard) gave me everything. The school was a really important part of my whole family’s life with the running. We moved from Florida to Connecticut when my brother started at St. Bernard.”

During their 42 years of marriage, Paul encouraged her to go back and get her master’s degree, insisting that she find the time. When she came back to work at St. Bernard after stints at Loomis Chaffee in Windsor and Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, it was Paul riding the tractor, cutting the athletic fields and tending to the pitcher’s mound.

And now, as a former history major, he’s helping prep his wife on the finer points of Ancient Greece and Mesopetamia, so that she might teach it to the next group of Saints. Paul is always eager for the daily report.

“I’ll get home from school and he’ll say ‘Who did you see today?’” Griffin said with a laugh, as if she had time to chat with any of the couple’s old friends. “I’m like, ‘I saw my classes.’ When I was AD, part of my job was to check in with people. Now I see sixth-graders.”

Griffin was inducted into the St. Bernard Athletic Hall of Fame in 1999.

She coached the St. Bernard girls’ cross country team to Eastern Connecticut Conference and Class S state championships in 2005 and a fourth-place finish at the State Open.

She took great pride in her job as athletic director, trumpeting the Saints’ various successes, and making sure to establish a volleyball team prior to retiring.

Only now she’s not exactly sitting around her house in retirement.

“It’s just like coaching. It’s very challenging,” Griffin said of her new role. “I love the kids. I love being able to be back in that place.”

’They know who we are now’

East Lyme boys’ cross country coach Mike Flynn saw the teams scheduled to run the Boys’ Large School race at the 49th Manchester (N.H.) Invitational on Saturday at Derryfield Park.

And he figured, “Why not?”

The Vikings were previously expected to run the Small School race, but opted to run in the larger division among 13 teams which Flynn notes were ranked in their respective states — the top seven from New Hampshire, top five from Vermont and the No. 4 team from Massachusetts.

East Lyme, not mentioned in the preview for the race, won it with 76 points, topping Brookline, Massachusetts, with 126.

Defending ECC champion Sean McCauley was third for the Vikings in 16 minutes, 12 seconds, with Jilali Bendid seventh in 16:22, Sam Leone 15th in 16:46, Matt Carrier 26th in 17:03 and Jack Faitsch 29th in 17:10.

Flynn predicted before the season that this could be the best East Lyme team in history.

“We originally decided to go to this meet because it’s where New Englands was supposed to be before they moved it to Wickham,” Flynn said. “I ran this meet in high school and took teams to it, but we haven’t been in a long time.

“Great course. The second mile is brutal, so it’s valuable to experience that kind of pain. ... The guys ran great. They, like a lot of teams, had and have health stuff going on, but they’re very smart about what they can do and are so incredibly motivated they can perform like this.

“In the preview, they weren’t even mentioned in team title talk. Well they know who we are now.”

Flynn calls this team a coach’s dream. He said the Vikings had a tremendous summer of training. They have big goals and are training to achieve them, but remain grounded and still have fun every day.

East Lyme faces its next challenge this weekend at the Ocean State Invitational at Goddard Park in Warwick, R.I., competing in a loaded field in the championship race.

“These guys are very easy to talk about,” Flynn said. “Honestly, they care, they’re talented and they love to be coached. Just a special group.”

Polling place

The unbeaten East Lyme boys’ soccer team is ranked seventh in the CSCA Boys’ Soccer Coaches’ Poll for LL/L schools. ... The Stonington field hockey team is ninth in the state field hockey poll.

v.fulkerson@theday.com