The Journal News: Kennedy Catholic Honors Nun/Coach on her 50th Anniversary

By Jonathan Bandler • jbandler@lohud.com • May 16, 2010

Back in the late 1960s, cheerleaders at Kennedy Catholic High School in Somers went to Sister Janet Meehan and asked her to help them form a spring track team. The art and math teacher wasn't a runner and didn't know the first thing about coaching the sport. But she was a quick study and her years of tutelage for the school’s running and track stars were under way. "They came to me I guess because I was the youngest teacher then," she said. "I learned a lot about it. I always say if you're going to do something, you have to do it right."

Meehan also started the girls' cross-country team in 1975 and the winter track team two years later and has helped coach some of the boys' teams in recent years — and she marvels at how far girls' sports have come in the decades she has spent at the school.

This year, she celebrates 50 years since entering the religious order, Sisters of Divine Compassion, and the school's athletic association will dedicate its first Fun Run to her May 23.

The coordinator, Beth Mannion of Mount Kisco, said the group opted for a fun run because it was a way to get entire families "off the couch and active" and to recognize that fitness is fun. And it was fitting to honor Meehan because of all she has meant to the school and its running program for decades, she said.
Her husband, Frank Mannion, has a generational appreciation for Meehan. He took her class for art and mechanical drawing in the early 1970s when he was a Kennedy student, and in recent years his son and daughter have competed for her in cross-country. He recalled how she provided a record player so students could listen to music in art class and often cut his and other students' hair. "She was a bit different than (the other nuns), a bit more progressive," he said. "The art room was a little haven of relaxation. You had to do the work, but it was more relaxed." He said she struck the right balance of toughness and kindness in a coach, for his son, Luke, who graduated in 2006, and his daughter, Breeda, who is a senior this year.
(2 of 2)

Meehan, 68, was glad to hear it, saying her teaching philosophy was never to spell out what students should do step by step but to "introduce them to the possibilities of what they were doing and then get out of their way."

Meehan was born in Tarrytown and raised in Hawthorne. After graduating from the University of Notre Dame, she taught at Preston High School in the Bronx before her superiors sent her to Kennedy in 1967, when its new school building opened. "It was wonderful," she said. "They put me in the right place." She stopped teaching math in 1983, when the art program had expanded, and now chairs the school's Fine Arts Department.

From a coaching standpoint, she would always expect her juniors and seniors to tell her what workouts they would need. She coached "innumerable" league champions, several sectional titleholders and frequently had her top runners compete at the state and national levels. She spent 26 years as the Section I coordinator for girls' winter track until two years ago — saying she made sure to stay long enough to outlast all the coordinators who wanted to do away with the 1,500-meter walk.

The organizers of the Fun Run say they hope for more than 150 participants, including many of Meehan's former students and runners. The organizers planned the event for the end of May so that recent Kennedy graduates could come back after wrapping up their semester at college. She has maintained close ties to dozens of her runners. "Some are still my best friends," she said. "It makes it all worthwhile. I'm very proud of all my artists and my runners. I'm in it for the kids and they know it."