When he started coaching, Bob Mullen was following in the footsteps of his father. Don Mullen had coached track and field at Concord High School starting in 1958, only retiring when his eldest graduated from the school in 1986. Bob was the team’s assistant coach for his father’s last three years with the school.
In the fall of 1990, Bob Mullen joined Merrimack Valley as a special education teacher. The next semester, he started his first season as the track and field coach.
At the time, all the program had was a 400 meter stone dust track, a discus circle and a makeshift shot put. The school is now on its third all-weather track.
“We take good care of our facilities, and we’re proud of them,” Mullen said. “Sometimes I just love to drive around to see all the different things that are going on when practice is over. I drive over and see a lacrosse game, we’ll go over and catch the baseball game.”
Now, Bob Mullen is retiring after 37 years of coaching and teaching at the regional high school.
“It’s been my program for a long time, and it’s time for it to be somebody else’s,” he said.
Mullen has seen multiple generations through the program, including his own children. Kate Walsh, his oldest daughter, works at the Merrimack Valley Middle School as the speech and language pathologist and is one of the middle school track coaches.
Volunteer coach Benny Blanchette, as well as his wife Jacquey Blanchette, are both MVHS track alums who stayed in the community. Jacquey is a third grade teacher at the Penacook Elementary School as well as the team’s photographer. Ben recently returned as assistant coach for his daughter Genny, a freshman at the school who competes in discus and shot put.
“We basically turned into almost a second family,” Jacquey said. “He’s like a dad to us, even after we graduated.”
The two have been involved with the program since they graduated, helping Mullen organize the Merrimack Valley Invitational, which typically had over 25 schools attend, up until 2020.
Mullen’s philosophy, pulled from his own coaches and teachers, is that a coach’s job is to bring the skills out of his athletes.
“It’s a little terrifying to run full sprints and run over a hurdle the first time, you know? High jumping, turning your back to the ground and having confidence that you’re going to land on the pad,” Mullen said. “You had to tread softly. You had to encourage, but you also had to push kids a little bit to try that something new.”
Jeremy Hawkes, who was there for Mullen’s first year at MVHS, credits this approach to why he was able to become a conservation officer with New Hampshire Fish and Game. He said the success he had under Mullen proved to him that hard work would pay off.
“He knew how to get the best out of you,” Hawkes said.
The two still talk regularly, and Hawkes’s daughter does track for Coe-Brown Northwood Academy.
Mullen is retiring to spend more time with his family.
“I have another job to do now,” he said. Mullen has two grandchildren, four- and five-year-old boys. “I did not want to miss another minute of what they were doing.”
He credits much of what he has done to the support from his family, his wife, mother and two sisters.
“I really want to dedicate being there full time for them, and helping out my children the way my mother did when my kids were growing up,” he said.
Mullen also acknowledged those around him for the success of the Merrimack Valley track and field program: his numerous assistant coaches, the parents who have volunteered, the athletic department, facilities management and the school administration.
There is a “consistency and commitment from this community to just put the kids first,” he said.
His last official coaching duty was this past weekend at the New Hampshire Decathlon & Heptathlon Championships at Nashua South High School. He first attended the meet with his dad in sixth grade, and has gone almost every year since.
“It’s been a fun journey,” Mullen said. He looks forward to retirement as a “new lap of the track.”
