Two heart scares don’t slow Montgomery coach
By: Bob Nuse
For 25 years, slowing down was the last thing on Jim Goodfriend’s mind.
But two cardiac episodes can go a long way toward changing your way of thinking.
The 53-year-old Goodfriend, who has been a teacher in the Montgomery school system for 29 years, suffered the first of those episodes in late February, when a mild heart attack sent him to the hospital for five days. That event cut short his indoor track season. But a month later he was back coaching the girls’ track and field team, only to have that season cut short when he suffered another mild attack while in cardiac rehab in late May.
"The first time I actually had a mild heart attack at night, but I went back to sleep, which was not too smart," recalled Goodfriend, who has been coaching three seasons between cross country and track and field for the past nine years. "I went to the doctor the next morning and they sent me to the emergency room and did tests. I was in the hospital for five days. They did a catheterization.
"The second one was not actually a heart attack. I was at the hospital for my rehab and they said it had started. They sent me right over to the emergency room and they were able to stop it."
But the heart scares weren’t able to stop Goodfriend from coaching. While he has decided to give up coaching track and field during the winter season, he will continue as a cross country and spring track coach at Montgomery. When you’ve spent so much of your life coaching, stepping away isn’t easy at such a young age.
"I’m trying to cut back a little bit, but my personality doesn’t make it easy. I don’t like to just sit around. I know that’s bad and I’m trying to take it easy. With the winter season break it should be a little easier."
There have been very few breaks for Goodfriend since he began coaching at Montgomery 25 years ago. While the past nine years have been spent with the cross country and track programs, he also has coached boys’ and girls’ basketball, as well as baseball and softball at every level from middle school to junior varsity. It was there that he learned some of the more important aspects of coaching.
"The two guys that have helped me the most in coaching are Bill Korson and Joe Canik," said Goodfriend, a graduate of Bridgewater-Raritan West, who went on to play baseball in college at University of Dubuque in Iowa. "Those two helped me a lot. I had played football, basketball and baseball in high school, but Canik helped me a lot with cross country and track and knowing what to do. And Korson is a really organized guy and I was his assistant in basketball, which helped me a lot.
"It also helped that there have been coaches in the (Skyland) conference like (Bruce) Kafer at Somerville that have been willing to help as well. A guy like Al Jennings at Trenton was helpful during our years in the CVC. And those years there were also people like Marc Anderson and Becky Mackey at Princeton who were good coaches and good people. You could talk to them and exchange ideas, which was very helpful."
And after 25 years, Goodfriend isn’t ready to stop learning. He’ll start practice for the cross country season next week and keep going from there. In fact, even his season away from indoor track won’t be taken as a complete break.
"I think I’m going to coach my son’s rec basketball team," said Goodfriend, a physical education teacher at the middle school who had spent 25 years at Orchard Road School. "We’ll be starting cross country pretty soon. We’ll have to see what kind of impact football has on the program. We keep getting bigger and things keep happening with this place."
And Goodfriend isn’t quite ready to let those things happen without him.