WE LOST A GOOD ONE, A VERY GOOD ONE
FROM THE KINGSTON WHIG-STANDARD, 24 JANUARY 2008
Coach remembered as loyal to students; High school community mourns sudden passing of Bruce Marchen, 57
Posted By Brock Harrison
One of the most influential and dedicated men in the history of Kingston high school athletics has died.
Bruce Marchen, who coached basketball and football at Frontenac Secondary School, Queen Elizabeth Collegiate, Loyalist Collegiate and Sydenham High School, died of a heart attack Saturday at the age of 57.
“I can remember him standing outside the front of Frontenac Secondary School selling Christmas trees to raise money for his team,” recalled Pat McMenamin, who coached against Marchen in the senior football circuit in the early 1990s.
“That’s the kind of guy he was. With him, everything was about the kids.”
Jack Aldridge, who will give the eulogy at Marchen’s funeral today, said Marchen was his best friend. Aldridge remembers meeting him on Marchen’s first day as a teacher at Frontenac.
“He and I shared an office that year. He and his wife, we were all the best of friends,” Aldridge said.
He also remembers Marchen’s annual Christmas tree venture.
“We were the only people on Bath Road selling trees back then. We’d have 750 trees on a Friday and they’d be gone on Sunday. He had all kinds of ideas like that,” Aldridge said.
Marchen was incredible coaching high school students, Aldridge recalls.
“He always made a big effort to make the weaker players feel part of the team because those are the things you remember,” Aldridge said. “It’s not the championships or how many games you won, but the feeling of being part of a team. Bruce was one of those guys who just got that.”
Marchen’s teaching career took him into the prison system during the years the Frontenac County Board of Education taught in the prisons. He taught at Kingston Penitentiary and Millhaven Institution.
Marchen also served as principal at Sydenham in the late ’90s.
During the debate over the Harris government’s proposed cutbacks to the education system in 1997, Marchen sided with about 250 Sydenham students who organized a protest at the school one morning.
“It’s nice to see they’re making decisions about what they’re going to accept and what they’re not going to accept,” Marchen said at the time. “That showed they were committed to what they believed in.”
That type of loyalty to students was the same attitude Marchen brought to the basketball court or football field, Aldridge says.
“He never saw an error that a student made as a flaw, he just thought it was a mistake,” Aldridge said, “and his kids appreciated that. He would never embarrass them.”
Kingston Area Secondary Schools Athletic Association president Rob Druce said Marchen was “instrumental” in reviving high school athletic sports in Kingston after a 15-month hiatus that claimed the 2000-01 athletic season due to more labour strife between teachers and the Ontario government.
“Along with Barry O’Connor, Bruce helped get parents and volunteers and retired people like me to get together and run things, putting together schedules and organizing referees,” Druce said.
During his teaching and coaching career, Marchen served as KASSAA president, Eastern Ontario Secondary Schools Association president, and as EOSSAA’s representative to the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations. Marchen was an itinerant principal at the Limestone District School Board head office before retiring.
His funeral will be held at the Trousdale Funeral Home in Sydenham today at 11 a.m.
WE SHALL MISS BRUCE MARCHEN…..