Bernhisel to enter Wyoming coaching hall of fame

A passion for running and coaching and a long and successful career have led longtime former Rocky Mountain cross country and track coach John Bernhisel to a hallowed place among Wyoming coaches – the Wyoming Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

Bernhisel will be inducted into the hall on Friday, July 19, during the hall of fame banquet at the Ramkota Hotel in Casper.

Among those being inducted with Bernhisel is former Lovell High School coach Tom Holm, now of Gillette.

Still active at Rocky Mountain Middle/High School as a teacher, librarian and technology advisor, Bernhisel was the dean of North Big Horn County coaches when he retired after the 2022-23 school year, concluding a 33-year career that spanned from 1990 to 2022 coaching cross country and track and field as the long-distance coach.

His resume is remarkable: the 33 years of coaching; starting the cross country program at RMHS in 1990; four state championships in cross country, girls in 1990 and 2005 and boys in 2021 and 2022; 10 regional championship teams; 31 all-state athletes in track distance races; and hundreds of young people who discovered running through his guidance.

The last item on the list of accolades might be the most important to Bernhisel. To him, running is more than a sport or an activity. It’s a way of life.

“Running, for me personally, was a huge mental health benefit throughout my life,” said Bernhisel, a successful runner in high school in Fort Bragg, California, where he found a band of brothers on the cross country team and developed a love of running that has continued for nearly 40 years.

“It gave me an escape from, you know, challenges (early in life), and it also gave me an escape from challenges here,” he continued. “It’s a stress reliever of sorts, and it’s way cheaper than antidepressants and mental health therapy. I was good enough to compete locally and qualify for Boston and stuff, but the main benefit to me was my personal, physical and mental health. … My dad had a serious heart attack on his 50th birthday, so I’ve kind of had that in the back of my head, so that has been a secondary benefit, my personal health.”

In his prime, Bernhisel would run up to 60 or 70 miles a week. He has run seven ultra-marathons – five 50-mile races and two 50-kilometer races, 31 miles.

He remains active through bicycling and walking, noting that, with some back problems, “the running motion just doesn’t work for me anymore.”

A love of coaching

Teaching came naturally to Bernhisel, though not necessarily coaching.

“Both of my parents are schoolteachers, and coincidentally, both of (wife) Sally’s parents are schoolteachers,” he said. “Coaching was not my primary thing. I just sort of fell into it, to be honest. In my very first year here I was Ben Smith’s assistant track coach, and I did the distance runners. And in a lot of ways Jeanna Bair was a big impetus.”

Jeanna Bair, now Merritt, was a talented distance runner for the Rocky Mountain Grizzlies. Sisters Andrea and Karen were also runners.

“So that second year I was here, partly for Jeanna, we got permission to have a cross country team, and that first year there was Rocky and Wyoming Indian, two 2A schools. That‘s it,” Bernhisel said. Athletes from Lovell High School also ran with the Grizzlies for many years, as well, and later, Burlington. Even some Powell and Cody runners ran with the Grizz before they formed teams.

As a coach, Bernhisel has always said that his main goal was to see improvement in his runners and that they develop a lifelong love of running. He said his high school in Fort Bragg was typical in that “football and basketball was everything and the cross country team was a little bit of an outcast.” But he’s thankful that his school did have a cross country team, because in the sport he found “maybe my great talent in life.”

And like Bernhisel, many others have found their love of running, something they enjoyed, whether they were stars or not.

“It’s a different group of kids that comes out for cross country, and sometimes we struggle to get attention. … But at Rocky we created an alternative to the other sports,” he said. 

“Everybody gets to participate in cross country. JC Bendixen cried when he broke 30 minutes, and it was hugs all over. It was this huge moment, but we created something for him. And if he would have been on the football team, he would have sat on the bench every game. But he got to participate and had a gift of self-esteem. And for what it’s worth, JC went into the military and did OK, maybe because of that.”

There were challenges in coaching track, Bernhisel noted. For instance, for many years when the high school was located in Byron, the school didn’t have a track, so Rocky Mountain athletes would train in Lovell a couple times a week.

One of the joys of running cross country and even distance running in track is getting out into the country, Bernhisel noted.

“Mostly, I wanted to get kids out,” he said. “I’ve run on every trail in Byron, and I know that river bottom in Byron as well as anybody. I think the fun of distance running is going
out and running on a trail or getting in the mud.

“When I was coaching track, even when we had a brand new track here, I probably only did two track workouts a week for the distance runners. Mostly we headed out of town.”

There is certainly technique and strategy involved in coaching distance running, Bernhisel said, but a lot of it is encouragement.

“It’s only 10 percent of the kids, honestly, the Jeanna Bairs or the Dominic Twomeys or an Emily Higgins that you do much real coaching with – how to approach a race,” he said. “What you want to get kids to do is to not walk and to finish, and it’s a pretty high percentage of the kids where you want them to keep going and eventually they get to the point where running three miles doesn’t feel like a crazy, horrible thing. Then you can start saying, ‘I’m going to give you your mile split, and I want to hear that you’ve done it in seven minutes.

“But mostly we talk about endurance and how much pain can you tolerate.”

Running for life

What the longtime coach loves most of all is helping students develop a lifelong love of running.

“Almost every week, I have, on Facebook or something, someone send me a note that says, ‘Hey, I just think you’d want to know that I lost 20 pounds and I ran a 5K,’ or ‘I ran a half marathon.’

“The Bullinger girls, obviously, they went to Burlington, and they were both outstanding runners. They send me just little notes. I communicate with a lot of people through Facebook and obviously run into people around town, and it’s just the greatest thing in my life. It just means so much to me. I’m not old enough to start worrying about my legacy. But I’m very proud that lots of people have become runners, and whether it’s competitively or recreationally or just to lose 10 pounds, it makes me supremely proud that that happens. And it’s a real great honor.

“I’m the weird runner in town, and that’s OK. I like it.”

As for the hall of fame honor, Bernhisel said it was unexpected.

“It totally surprised me,” he said. “I had no idea. I love Wyoming. I don’t know how to say it better. It’s my home. To be recognized in a small way in this state that I love, it’s a credit to our school. It was unusual to have a cross country team as a 2A school. It was just us and Wyoming Indian as I said. I’ve had seven different principals, and I’ve had, I think, six different athletic directors, and they all supported it (the team) and pushed it along.

“For me personally, I don’t seek recognition, but it validates the work. Like I said, being the cross country coach doesn’t get the accolades that the football and basketball coaches get, so it validates that time.
I’m just so very proud and appreciative of those people that nominated me, and, of course, all the athletes we’ve had over
the years. But it’s humbling. It really is.

“I recognize how rare it is, and the time’s gone so fast. I get very emotional thinking about all the time. I never dreaded practice. I never dreaded traveling on the bus with kids. I never dreaded that, so it never felt like work. And I’ve got to give credit to Sally -- all the hours as a coach’s wife. I was doing some math the other day, and I think I’ve probably spent, like, four months of my life in Casper.”

For John Bernhisel, his love has been in running and helping student athletes, but every now and then it’s nice for “a weird runner in town” to be recognized.