NRHS Girls Track Coach Andy Capellan Goes the Distance

Coach Andy Capellan is a bona fide institution.

The New Rochelle High School girls cross country and track coach has been coaching for 31 years, although his scholastic sports career began as a boys football coach in New York City.

He arrived as girls track coach at NRHS in 1980 while juggling an overly scheduled life, which included raising a family, teaching at a junior high school in East Harlem, and coaching football at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan.   

Coach Cap, as he is affectionately known, has a history in track and field. A track athlete while attending the University of Iowa, he competed in multiple events — hurdles, shot put, high jump and long jump were his events of choice.  

While in coaching mode, he not only draws on his years as an experienced coach and a former athlete, but on a formula learned in a psychology class as well.

"Something I learned as a student in a psychology class was form, storm, and norm.  It is something I've never forgotten, and I use all of the time as a coach," he said. "I tell my athletes they must come together and form together as a team."

Invariably, whether male or female, athletics or business, conflicts arise on any team. This is when Coach Cap prepares for the storm. 

"Personality conflicts always occur. Clashes happen. Some may quit. It can get ugly. There is always a point in the season when this happens," he said. When it does, Coach Cap knows that clear skies—the norm— are ahead.

"This is when you begin to accept and respect your fellow athlete. You gain mutual respect. You suffer experiences together, hard workouts, practices. Every team and organization goes through it," Capellan said.

Indeed they do, and, for the girls on the NRHS cross country and track and field teams, their norm includes bonding to form a cohesive, award-winning team that also becomes a tight-knit athletic family.

NRHS Senior Amira Yeiser is a member of this family.  Co-captain of both the cross country and track teams, Yeiser joined the team as a freshman.

"I was playing lacrosse and tennis and joined the track team because I thought that it would be good for conditioning," Yeiser said. "Once I was on the team, I really liked it and the people on the team. Then it just became my passion."

Although she finds the practices "hard, long and having to be done in all types of weather," she finds them beneficial.  "Being on the track team has helped me develop better eating habits. I'm more conscious of my body. I've become more fit and healthier," Yeiser said.  "It's opened up more opportunities to me for colleges, including my dream college," where the track coach has already expressed an interest in her athletic abilities.

It's hard to say when Coach Cap's season starts and ends. Suffice to say that it seems as if it is one continuous loop.  He begins practice for cross country at the end of August, just as the girls return from track camp. The cross country season morphs into the indoor track and field season, which becomes the outdoor season in the spring.

Spring turns into summer, and then there's track camp. Isn't this where we started?

Somewhere in there, the athletes have some time off, but, for the most part, they are always athletes in training. Before you think that Coach Cap is the Bobby Knight of girls cross country and track, know this, his athletes request the practices. He first saw this dedication while coaching Stuyvesant's very first girls track team.

"Once they saw they can do something and be competitive, they started to feel like athletes," Capellan said. "I was used to coaching football. I coached [girls] just the same. I got on their cases and made demands.  I treated them like athletes, not girls. That's how I got the most out of them."

While he concedes that he may have mellowed a bit over the years, he continues to demand dedication and hard work from his athletes.

"The other day we were practicing. One of my runners stopped in the middle of a run to fix her hair," Capellan said. I" said, 'Are you kidding me? You're stopping to fix your hair?'"

He sent her home, but not before telling her to get her head together and come back when she learns what it means to be on a team.  Tough love, but necessary if you're building a team.

"The first thing I always do is to try and find out why they are here [on the team]. Is it social, or is it athletic? Do you want to be great? You have to compete with yourself and other athletes from other teams," Capellan said.

He often makes an analogy about a bus when explaining the journey the coach and team take together: "My job is to be your coach. This coach bus is taking you somewhere. We are on a journey. Our goal is to go together."

Over the years, this journey has led Coach Capellan and his team to 39 league titles, 33 Westchester County championships and 29 Section 1 indoor and outdoor championships. He has helped shape numerous local, state, and national champs in both individual and team events.

As the school year started, he was once again he in competition for athletes to field his cross country team. The fall season offers girls spots on cross country, tennis, swimming, soccer and volley ball teams. Coach Cap's famous practices for cross country take place on Saturdays, holidays, and after school. They can be grueling and time consuming as many who run long distance are aware. 

However, it is here where he recognizes who the dedicated athletes are. In a message on the team website, Coach Cap acknowledges that an inconsistent turnout from year to year presents challenges to competitiveness and consistency. But he insists that it does not prevent the team from working hard and competing. 

By the way, the runner who had to pause while running to adjust her coiffure, ultimately returned to practice.