Jun. 9—With about three weeks left in the season, Jerry Boschee turned the corner on a decision he’d been mulling since the start of the 2021 high school track: It was time to hang up the stopwatch.
Boschee, the girls’ track and field coach at Glacier High School since it opened its doors in 2007-08, is retiring from coaching. Glacier High School activities director Mark Dennehy announced the news Tuesday via an email.
“After 20 great years of being the girls head track coach at Glacier and Flathead High, Jerry Boshee has decided to retire from this role,” Dennehy wrote. “We have been very fortunate to have Jerry leading our kids and program. His contributions will be missed, but will last for decades.”
Contacted Tuesday, Boschee said he started thinking about retirement as he got into the routine of the 2021 season, coming after a gap year necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. As the season wound toward its close, he told Dennehy and his assistants of his decision.
“I finally told all my girls after our awards dinner on Thursday. Then we cried a little bit,” the 53-year-old said. “Then we cried a little more and got a couple hugs and that was the end.”
A Killdeer, North Dakota native who was a sprinter at North Dakota State — where he met his wife, Michele, a Bison hurdler — Boschee started his coaching career in Lisbon, N.D. After three years, one as a head coach, he took a teaching job at Flathead.
He was an assistant to Bravettes’ track coach Joe McKay for seven seasons, during which Flathead won four State AA titles; he then was head coach from 2002-07 while Flathead won two more.
Then Glacier opened and Boschee made the switch. His oldest daughter, Lexy, was set to be a freshman there.
“She wanted to be at Glacier, and I didn’t want to be apart from my kids,” he said. “He also coached son Cain and daughter Zoee.
Lexy went on to compete at NDSU, while Cain did football and track at Dickinson (N.D.) State. Zoee had a promising career curtailed by two ACL tears, though she continued to compete.
“She was probably there more for me than her, but I loved being there with her,” her dad said.
His 14 years with the Wolfpack girls included a third-place finish at state in his third season, 2010, and back-to-back-to-back runner-up finishes from 2015-17.
“Second so many times,” Boschee said. “We just never could get over the hump. We had great teams, with Nikki Krueger, Ahna Kreitinger, Annie Hill. And also, as an assistant coach to Arron Deck, I got to coach his sprinters the one year they won the state championship (in 2018). That was a hell of a lot of fun.”
Glacier sandwiched ninth-place finishes at the State AA meet around the pandemic. The last three weeks he felt he needed to keep his retirement under wraps.
“Every time we’d go somewhere, somebody would come up to me and say, ‘This is the last time we’re going to be here together like this,'” He said. “You kind of lean back and get nostalgic, but you’re trying to coach the kids and let them know it’s all about them as you finish.”
Boschee will continue to teach social studies at Glacier, so he will be around.
“I’ve had some great, wonderful assistant coaches over the years, and great kids,” he said. “I’m glad to be at this point, and happy to be leaving at this point instead of waiting too long and maybe having bittersweet memories.”