Mirror photo by Patrick Waksmunski Julie Roseborough began coaching track and field at Bellwood-Antis High School in 1966 and ended up with nearly 500 victories and 34 state medalists. She also coached cross country and field hockey at Bellwood.

For the first time since its girls track and field program started, Bellwood-Antis will have a different head coach this spring.

The school recently approved Jennifer Soisson as the new coach after Julie Roseborough stepped down after 57 years of leading the program.

“I wanted to be fair to the kids,” Roseborough said. “In my mind, I still know enough about everything. I probably mentally could have still coached, but I’m 80 years old. I wanted to be fair to all the kids. It was getting much harder to get around physically to all the events, and that’s not right. If I was going to stick with it, I would have had to be able to do it mentally and physically. I still do most things in life, but teenagers and all the events, to try and get around to all of that, it was just time. There are some good people like Jenn Soisson, who will be good with the kids, and (boys coach) Nick Lovrich. You couldn’t coach with a better man than Nick, both knowledge wise and the kind of coach he is.”

Roseborough received the lifetime achievement award at last year’s Blair County Hall of Fame ceremony, and the Juniata Valley graduate is a member of the Huntingdon County Hall of Fame.

“I have been really fortunate to work with her all of these years,” Lovrich said. “She was the (physical education) teacher when I was in school and the track coach. We have been coaching track together for 25 years. We have been together for a long time, and she’s someone very special. You won’t see coaches coach as long as she has. She’s a special breed. The kids love her. You talk to kids who had her in the 1960s when track started, and they tell the same stories kids tell now. She’s an inspiration to the kids and a mother figure. Kids love being around her, and that’s been the story her entire career.”

How it started

Roseborough graduated from West Chester University in 1964 and took a job as a physical education instructor at Bellwood-Antis later that year. In the spring of 1966, she became the first coach for the school’s new girls track and field team.

“The memories of working with so many kids and seeing the progress of girls track and field will stick with me,” Roseborough said. “When I first started, there was no such thing as girls track and field team competition. Bob Fowler, who was the boys track coach my first year of coaching, asked me if I would like to have some girls events in the Bellwood Invitational (in 1965, a year before the team officially started), and I said, ‘sure, why not?'”

Girls track and field was still in an infancy stage at the high school level in the 1960s.

“Track existed, because of the Olympics, but it wasn’t a high school sport, at least in most areas,” Roseborough said. “You had to learn on the fly. I think we have five events when it started. I remember one of the events that they put in at the Bellwood Invitational that first year was the softball throw. We had to evolve year by year, and it took years for it to become what it is now.”

Even events that stuck among the current 18 that are scored in team meets have changed since Roseborough started.

“I remember the high jump, when we started that, you did a scissors kick and landed in sawdust on your feet,” Roseborough said. “That’s entirely different than from now. There was an evolution, and more events were added and changed every year.”

Though Roseborough was an athlete herself, the sport wasn’t available to her during her playing days.

“When I was in college, I played some basketball and softball,” Roseborough said. “It started as almost an accident. The first few years, we just had a few meets, and it continued to grow from there.”

Learning on the fly

As the sport continued to evolve over her career, so did Roseborough.

“I had to learn over the years,” Roseborough said. “Back when I first started coaching, I pretty much handled everything by myself. You had to learn as the sport was developing. You had to stay caught up with everything. We used to go to conventions and workshops and all sorts of things. We have been blessed the last few years, because we have some volunteers in some of the specialty events like Rick Kensinger in hurdles and Rudy Bilka in pole vault, but you have to learn in track 18 different events.”

Roseborough has mentored thousands of kids through several decades, and though different generations have followed their own trends, she was always able to relate to her student-athletes.

“Kids have changed and times have changed, but when people give respect with how they treat people, that doesn’t change,” Lovrich said. “She’s always treated everyone like they were her own kid. She always had each individual kid’s best interest in everything she’s ever done. She never changed. She’s always put the student-athlete first, and that’s what makes her special and helped her transcend different generations.”

Roseborough’s message to her student-athletes was always discussed early, but the respect she earned throughout the years helped the message even more than her words.

“My kids have always been excited and worked hard,” Roseborough said. “I try to stress to the kids, the first thing I say the first practice is that you don’t want to see any dissension between the kids, and they have always had a team feeling. In this day and age, there are still a lot of good kids left. Most of the kids I coached on the team last year were as positive and hard-working as kids I coached at the start. We never had too many discipline problems. Like a lot of schools and sports, once a tradition is set up, they understand that. It also helped that I coached kids, their mothers and their grandmothers.”

Plenty of assistance

Though she had to do it all early in her tenure at Bellwood-Antis, another thing Roseborough adapted to was accepting help from what she referred to as “excellent” assistant coaches.

“Robin Campbell has been the field coach for the girls for more than 30 years,” Roseborough said. “I trust her so much, so for those events, I would just put them in her hands. I still know about them, and I supervise them, because when track started, I had to coach them. I know a little bit about all the events, but we have been blessed with assistants over the years to help even more.”

Though Campbell has been with her the longest, others like Kensinger, Bilka and Soisson to name only a few, have played a key role in Bellwood’s success.

“I have had so many wonderful assistant coaches over the years,” Roseborough said. “It got to the point where I would always monitor what was going on, but take hurdlers for example, I would make sure they were covering what they needed to cover, but it got to the point that if someone else was good at coaching that, all I had to do was kind of monitor it. A lot of the credit goes to the assistants I have had over the years.”

Ironically, Roseborough herself will now transition to the role of valuable assistant to Soisson.

“I told (B-A athletic director) Charlie Burch when I resigned that I would like to apply to be a volunteer assistant,” Roseborough said. “I coached half of cross country this year, but for some of the same reasons, I wanted to be fair to those kids. I talked to Charlie, and we switched the assistant (Connor Hunter) up to the head coach. I was still around, but I gave him the full range as head coach. I helped with some little things. I’ll probably do the same in track. That doesn’t mean I can’t take some time off, and I won’t go to every practice, but I’ll still be around some.”

Lovrich is looking forward to the presence of “Miss R” around Bellwood’s track at Memorial Stadium, which was dedicated in her name on May 1, 2006.

“Mentally, she knows more about track than anyone,” Lovrich said. “She can help with any event. I’m sure (Soisson) is really going to enjoy having her there. She was actually her volunteer assistant, so they have a good relationship. It’s going to be great for her to have a person there that has experienced everything.”

Soisson agreed that Roseborough’s experience will continue to benefit the program.

“It was a bit intimidating at first to be handed the baton from her,” Soisson said. “She has made such an incredible impact on Bellwood and it’s a wonderful opportunity to follow her legendary footsteps. She laid the foundation on Bellwood’s track and field and cross country programs through the relationships she’s developed with the student-athletes, coaches and the other coaches within our conference. I am thankful for all I’ve learned from her over this past year and am especially grateful for her willingness to be a volunteer coach moving forward as I transition into the head coach role.”

Unmatched success

Roseborough’s 57 seasons as coach of the Bellwood-Antis girls track and field team is a Blair County record unlikely to ever be matched. She coached 34 state medalists, including Lisa Haupt, who won a PIAA gold medal in the long jump in 1977.

She finished her career 487-100-3 and also spent time coaching the boys and girls cross country teams for 30 years and the field hockey team in the 1970s and 1980s. Overall, she’s coached her teams to a record of 977-369-19.

“One thing about Bellwood girls track, it has existed for 57 years, and they have never had a losing season,” Roseborough said. “I’m not saying that for me, I’m saying that for the kids who accomplished it.”

Generational legend

As impressive as Roseborough’s coaching tenure was, her memory may be even better.

“She’s the only coach the (girls team) has ever had,” Lovrich said. “Not only as a coach but as a teacher, you think of the number of kids she’s dealt with. I remember her telling me a story about running into someone at Kohl’s, and Miss R just turned 80. This woman was 70-something years old, and she was from one of the first groups (Roseborough) had, and she remembered her. She’s been involved with almost every single girl that’s gone through Bellwood since the 1960s. She’s done such a great job promoting women’s sports and helping kids be the best person they can be.”

Roseborough isn’t sure exactly how many girls she coached over the years, but she’s likely one of very few coaches to have served as a mentor to three generations of families from a community.

“To show the scope of the number of kids I coached, the kids I coached last year, the youngest were 14,” Roseborough said. “The kids I coached my first year are now in their 70s. I have coached everyone in between at Bellwood from kids who are 14 now to kids I coached the first year who are now 73 or 74.”

Fittingly, Roseborough was honored alongside longtime Bellwood-Antis football coach John Hayes during last year’s Blair County Hall of Fame dinner. Between the two of them, they coached the majority of children to pass through the school district in the last 50 years.

“Miss R is a true coaching legend in our community and area,” Burch said. “She will be missed tremendously. She has impacted the lives of thousands of student-athletes at Bellwood-Antis since the 1960s.”