LaPorte coaching duo the area’s best

Updated: June 24, 2011 3:04PM

There are plenty of reasons LaPorte shouldn’t be good at boys track.

It’s the smallest school in the Duneland Athletic Conference. It doesn’t have the facilities of some of its league rivals. It has two other very good spring sports for boys, baseball and golf.

But there are also a couple of reasons why the Slicers are one of the up-and-coming teams in Northwest Indiana: Bob James and Tim Beres.

Since they took over the program before the 2007 season, James and Beres have turned the Slicers from an afterthought on the local boys track scene to a power to be reckoned with. LaPorte is 15-5 in duals over the past two seasons, including 7-2 this spring with wins over traditional powers Chesterton, Merrillville and Crown Point, among others. The Slicers also were second to Chesterton in the Valparaiso Regional and produced a state medalist in senior hurdler Skyler Coburn. For making LaPorte boys track relevant again, James and Beres are the Post-Tribune’s Boys Track Co-Coaches of the Year.

This particular feel-good story began when the LaPorte head coaching job came open after the 2006 season. James, a football assistant who believed the two programs could help each other, applied for the job. But he wanted some help, especially with the distance runners.

So James went to Beres, who had been the Slicers’ cross country coach since 2004. “I went to Tim and said, ‘I think with me coming in from the football end and you from cross country, we could do something pretty special. But I need you on board,’” James said.

Beres knew he didn’t want to be the head coach of two sports, given all the time that would require. And initially, he wasn’t even keen on coaching track at all. “He said, ‘I can’t do that,’” James said. “’I devote so much to cross country as it is.’”

But after some thought, Beres went back to James with a proposition: They would take the head coach and assistant’s salaries, split the money evenly and serve as co-head coaches. That was all James needed to hear and a unique working relationship was born.

“It has been a good combination,” Beres said. “We work very well together. Maybe some areas I was weak at, he was pretty strong at and vice versa. We have similar philosophies, we’re both very committed.”

While they each focus on their areas of expertise — James works mainly with the sprinters and jumpers — they do consult on issues involving the program as a whole. “I can’t remember having a disagreement on a lineup or anything like that,” Beres said.

What makes the situation perhaps even more remarkable is that neither is a track lifer. James was a baseball player in high school who was talked into joining the track team as a thrower as a senior. Other than one season as an assistant at LaPorte around 10 years ago, he hadn’t coached the sport.

Beres’ story is similar. “I hated running,” he said. “I was more into baseball. ... My wife was training for a half-marathon and talked me into running.”

That led to the cross country job and now to track.

Now the hope is that track has established a foothold at LaPorte and can be successful in the long term. “Skyler is definitely going to be a huge loss,” Beres said of Coburn, who was seventh in the 300 hurdles at state and will run at Miami of Ohio.

But there’s talent returning, including state qualifiers Payton McCoy (11th in the 200 meters this spring) and Mitchell Hubner (18th in the 1,600). Also back will be sectional discus champ Austin Epple and Anthony Didion, “the best freshman distance runner I’ve coached,” according to Beres.

“The reason we’ve had success is we got kids committed in the offseason,” Beres said. “The kids have bought into the fact that we can perform pretty well if (we) put the work in.”

Of course, it also helps to have two head coaches working just as hard to build up the program.

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