Relationships kept Carol Bauer in coaching for more than 3 decades

Carol Bauer spent half an hour on the phone recently, catching up with Maria Baldwin, one of her former runners.

Marsha Backstrom, who spurred Bauer’s creation of the Fieldcrest cross country program in 1999, has her children call Bauer “Grandma Coach.”

When Grant Kirkpatrick finished his first marathon, he called Bauer before he even completed his cooldown.

“I could give hundreds of those examples,” Bauer said. “It was the relationships with the kids and the feeling that I made a difference in their lives in a positive way [that kept me in coaching].”

Now, after more than three decades of coaching cross country, track and field, and volleyball at the high school and junior high levels at Fieldcrest, Bauer won’t be coaching when practices for the 2025-26 school year begin Monday.

Bauer coached the Fieldcrest track and cross country programs since their inception. She served as an assistant coach the last school year to help ease the transition to her retirement.

“Without a doubt, I can come up with good workouts, but my ability to coach kids falls in the connections I have with them,” Bauer said. “For years, I taught junior high, and that made the connections so much stronger, and they had total trust in me because they knew me. I’m no longer teaching, so those connections are just like vague entities.

“I’ve had people reach out to me for one-on-one coaching. With that, I think I can still find success, but with a school program and the kids not really knowing me, I was going to lose that part that I love the best.

“I want to be able to be the best coach ever for kids, and I’m just not equipped to do that anymore.”

Bauer had plenty of success as a coach, although she initially “fell into” the profession. When she was a runner at Illinois State University, Bauer was home training with the boys cross country team at Putnam County, her alma mater, when the coach left just before the school year.

Putnam County asked her to take over the team, and Bauer did while also starting the girls cross country program at the school.

“That was never my intent [to coach], but I was smart enough to figure out that if I didn’t do it, the program might die,” Bauer said. “So that was my drop-you-right-into-the-boiling-water moment.”

That experience made Bauer want to pursue coaching.

At her first teaching job at Henry-Senachwine Junior High, she coached seventh grade volleyball and girls track and field.

Bauer was living in Momence when she was asked to interview at Fieldcrest Junior High. She said she “had very limited coaching experience” when she arrived at Fieldcrest, but at the first teacher in-service, the high school principal told her she was going to coach girls track, so she became the school’s first girls track coach in 1992-93.

In 1999, Backstrom asked about starting cross country, and Bauer went to the athletic director about creating the program.

“The board was super hesitant,” Bauer said. “They said it sounded like a great idea, but they didn’t have the money in the budget for it. I’m sure I threw them for a loop, because I said I would coach them for free. Then they were concerned about bus driving, and I said I have a bus driving license, and I will drive them for free.

“They decided they couldn’t create a brand-new position at that point, but they would unofficially hire me as the cross country coach and assign me all the bus trips, which they would pay me for.”

Backstrom went on to run at Bradley University, and a couple of years after the cross country program started, Bauer was hired as the paid cross country coach.

Backstrom was one of five of Bauer’s runners to go to compete at an NCAA Division I school. She coached 14 runners who went on to college careers.

Bauer helped five runners qualify for state a total of 12 times in cross country and helped 15 athletes qualify for state in 36 events in track and field.

She coached three athletes - Brian Peterson, Mason Stoeger and Baldwin - to seven medals in cross country and helped seven athletes claim 23 medals in track, along with one relay.

Peterson was Bauer’s most successful runner, winning the Class 1A 3,200-meter state title in 2008 and placing second in the Class 1A cross country meet in 2007.

“He didn’t have a ton of natural talent, but his ability to withstand pain and work hard was incredible,” Bauer said. “You don’t get very many of those. I would say with all the kids I’ve ever coached, I’ve had three who just could push themselves to where they would almost black out in their drive to get to the finish line first.”

Peterson’s successes are among Bauer’s favorite coaching memories along with watching Tessa Holland - who won eight state track medals - compete in the high jump at state, change her spikes to run a leg of the 4x800, then go back to jumping and have her first relay team qualify for state.

But her favorite memory was seeing Danielle Meierhofer qualify for state in the 4x800 after missing a full year when she suffered severe injuries in a car accident.

“When those girls qualified, they came to the fence, and all of us were hugging and crying,” Bauer said. “Then Danielle was nominated to give the athlete’s oath at the state meet. That’s probably the biggest highlight.”

While the state champion and medalists stand out, Bauer said she recognized the contributions of all athletes on the team and felt it was her job “to help them be the best person they could be” regardless of their athletic ability.

“The best part was just the kids who would achieve a goal they never thought they could and those hugs and tears on the field,” said Bauer, who also won more than 400 matches in junior high volleyball. “Having them reach their goals, it makes the long hours, low salary and all the craziness that goes with it all worthwhile in that moment.”