A Coach Preaches Goal 4 Through Commitment, Persistence

Del Norte's Fred Polich has helped create legions of students who understand determination and perseverance.

Fred Polich is not an accredited teacher, but if there is a solid-gold practitioner of Goal 4 in Albuquerque Public Schools’ strategic plan, it is the quiet man sitting in an even quieter corner of Del Norte High School’s athletics office.

He’s been coaching cross country and track and field athletes at Del Norte for nearly 35 years and doesn’t have a single state championship to show for it – at least, not as the head of a program. 

But Polich, a former Knight himself, says he doesn’t measure true success by first-place finishes or medals or trophies. 

Those victories come in different forms – and not always when one of his athletes is in school, or for that matter, out on the track. Often, they arrive months or years or even decades later, when Polich runs into onetime members of his teams. Many regale him with stories of how he helped them hurdle life, or outsprint a crisis, or even find a way to cross the finish line on a career.

“I’ve even had one of the girls ask me to stand in to walk her down the aisle,” he says.

Sometimes, Goal 4 is Job 1 in the life of a coach, or band director, or algebra teacher or JROTC instructor: far from a standardized test or the final page of “The Great Gatsby” or an indecipherable trigonometry problem are lessons learned about life.

Colleagues and former students at Del Norte say that’s where Polich has done his best coaching.

“The knowledge and the drive that he instilled in me as an athlete helped me go to the next level,” says Matt Sanderson, who competed at Del Norte in the early 2000s. “He’s the reason I was able to go to college. I got a full-ride scholarship because of his guidance.”

“He is a coach only, but he might as well be a full-time teacher,” says Del Norte Principal Ed Bortot. “He helps with being a gym master, fills orders for upkeep on our facilities, and is always a helping hand with our staff, students, and parents. He is always on campus. He is always doing something for our school and community.”

“I learned a lot from him,”adds Dallas Petersen, a former member of Del Norte’s track and field team and now its head football coach. “I try to coach the way he was with me. I try to mimic everything he’s done.”

For his part, Polich says he has loved almost every day at Del Norte – and that’s a lot of days.

He was a star long jumper at the school in the early 1970s, a time when Del Norte was lush with students and athletes and success. After college, he got into the health club business and would’ve been fine there if not for the tug of track and field, where he occasionally coached some of the city’s better runners and jumpers on the side.

In 1990, he joined Del Norte as an assistant track coach, and before too long, found himself heading the boys’ track and cross country teams, in addition to running the girls’ cross country programs.

It’s not as if the Knights haven’t been successful: though fortunes and enrollments have ebbed and flowed through the decades, Del Norte has been a solid presence on the track and in the dirt.

“I mean, I’ve been like second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth – I’ve got all the stuff over there,” he says, nodding to trophies in another corner of the office. “We’ve been so close.”

Disappointment is a great motivator – and an even better teacher. And since not every kid is the next Usain Bolt, Polich uses imperfection as his teacher’s aide. In his understated way, he’s constantly preaching the basics. Get to practice. … Work hard to improve, even if it’s just a little bit. … Challenge yourself. … Be a teammate.

“He knew exactly what I had to do to get where I was meant to be; where I wanted to go,” said Sanderson, a former long jumper who won a scholarship to Drake University and now is a health and wellness coach for a national company. “His motivation was to get me to show up every single day and work hard. Work hard. He brought out the best in me. 

“There were times when he was putting me through workouts, and I had to push through the barrier in order to get to the next level,” he adds. 

In a lot of ways, perhaps even without consciously thinking about it, Polich evangalizes the district’s Goal 4 – increasing the percentage of students who demonstrate perseverance, self-regulation, self-confidence and social awareness. Those traits help a student succeed – and not just in school.

For a moment, Polich thinks back to the former student who asked him to walk her down the aisle. He recalls the tough times with students and how they eventually create good times.

“For me, it’s a little different because I’m not your average, everyday normal person,” he says. “I never got married. I don’t have my own kids. These are my kids. … So, I was like, I’m honored. Shoot, I’ll be a dad. Yeah, you bet. I mean, it’ just, it’s just special to me.”