Almost every year I repeat the Greenfield Lightlife Triathlon’s motto “To finish is to win” somewhere along the way as I write about the event, which transpired Sunday.
The motto has different meanings for various people. For some, it may simply serve as a reminder of what they’ve accomplished. For others, it can provide extra meaning to an accomplished goal that once may have seemed unapproachable. And then there are those special cases where the meaning can mean even more. Take Ludlow’s Jim Quenneville, for instance, for whom that was certainly the case after he suffered a pre-Triathlon heart attack last summer.
Completing triathlons is nothing new for the 55-year-old Quenneville, who grew up in Holyoke and graduated from Holyoke Catholic High School. Quenneville was never much of an athlete. He was a Shriners baby, as he puts it, born with clubbed feet that required him to have five surgeries early in life. The surgeries didn’t transform Quenneville into a star athlete.
“I couldn’t walk and I couldn’t run very well as a kid,” Quenneville said. “When it came to sports, I was the kid who played ‘left out’ more than anything.”
One thing Quenneville loved about sports was the atmosphere, something he wanted to be around even if he couldn’t excel. He said that when he was a high-school freshman, someone asked him why he didn’t try umpiring baseball games if he liked being around the diamond so much. Soon he was umpiring games for Holyoke youth baseball.
“I remember I had some arguments my first time out so I thought, ‘I better learn the rules a little better,’” he joked.
Quenneville said he took to learning the rules, not only by reading rule books, but by watching games. He would even hang out at the old Holyoke Millers baseball games, and when they were over, he would ask the umpires to explain things he didn’t understand.
In 1980, Quenneville attended Harry Wendelstedt’s School for Umpires, where he was in class along with Mark Hirschbeck, who went on to work as in the major leagues from 1987-2003, and who’s brother John Hirschbeck is currently a major-league umpire, a career that began in 1984.
After Quenneville graduated from umpire school, he began working high school and American Legion Baseball games in western Massachusetts., beginning in 1980. His 35-year umpiring career finally ended this spring when he retired following the state Division IV championship game between St. John Paul and Oxford at The College of Holy Cross in Worcester.
Quenneville said that during his years of service, he had the pleasure of umping a number of players who went on to play in the majors, including Greenfield’s Peter Bergeron, along with World Series champion Mark Wohlers (from Holyoke) and current big-leaguer Nick Ahmed, who went to East Longmeadow High School and plays for the Arizona Diamondbacks.
“It’s always neat to see kids in a different light,” he said. “You see a big-league player and you say, ‘I knew that kid when he was hitting in the sandlot.’”
He also became a football official, beginning in 1988. By 1994, he was officiating WMass Super Bowls, including his first one officiating none-other than the Bergeron-led Greenfield High School team against Holyoke High School. He also began officiating at the collegiate level, including work with Paul King (from Worcester) and Kevin Codey (of Pittsfield), both current NFL officials. Quenneville said he has mostly worked NCAA Division III football games, covering teams like Amherst and Williams, but has worked Division II and Division I-AA (now the Football Championship Subdivision) games.
His start in triathlons came 15 years ago as a member of the Ludlow Boys’ Club and a volunteer during the Ludlow Sheriff’s Department triathlons, which included one event that used the Boys’ Club pool. He said he remembers thinking, “Hey, I can do this,” while volunteering, and 12 years ago he finally competed in his first, the very same event for which he had served as a volunteer. He began doing a couple triathlons a year, including the Greenfield event, which he competed in multiple times. The only year he didn’t compete was in 2010 when he had hip-replacement surgery.
Last summer, he was set to come back to Greenfield after spending the summer training, including getting up in the wee hours on July 25, 2015, and setting out on a 2-hour, 27-mile bike ride. When he returned home, he wasn’t feeling right. No, it wasn’t his typical feeling after a long bike ride.
“I said to my wife, ‘Ouch, something doesn’t feel right. It’s a different pain than what I’m used to,’” he recalled. She asked me what hurt and I told her I felt a pain in my chest and in my arm. An hour later, we were in the emergency room.”
Doctors found that Quenneville had a 95 percent blockage in his right coronary, and he wound up spending four days in the hospital as doctors did an angioplasty and put in a stent.
“I always had good health and nutrition and exercise routines before, but now I’m even better,” Quenneville said. “I tell people, ‘I haven’t had a beer, coffee or a Big Mac since my surgery.’”
Quenneville returned to the sport in June, when he teamed up with his nephew’s wife to do the Westfield Wave Triathlon. Quenneville’s wife was hesitant about his return to full triathlons and asked him to do it as part of a team. The duo wound up second. That team was actually supposed to be a threesome, as Deerfield’s Rich Clark was supposed to do the swimming portion before the swim was cancelled due to water-bacteria concerns.
Quenneville and Clark know each other through football officiating, serving on the same crew for 15 years. The 59-year-old Clark has been doing triathlons and ironman competitions for nearly a decade and sits on the Greenfield Triathlon committee. It was always Quenneville’s goal to return to Greenfield after missing the event last summer, so he and Clark formed Team Q for this year’s race.
“We have worked together in football,” Quenneville said. “The goal was to do Greenfield all along. Rich has run Boston six times, and done the Montreal Ironman and he said, ‘Hey, let’s have a fun-run for a change.’”
It was decided that Clark would do the swim and the run, while Quenneville would do the bike. The Sprint Division relay featured five two-person teams, and Clark was the second-quickest out of the water, setting up Quenneville for the 15.14-mile bike. Last year at this time, competing in the bike portion of the Greenfield Triathlon probably seemed like only a dream. But on Sunday, Quenneville completed the course in 58 minutes, 8 seconds, the fourth fastest of the five teams. Clark then ran the 3.09 miles in 25:41, giving the two a combined time of 1:35:28.5, which put them third and got them up on the Sunday podium, where they collected their trophy mugs.
“I felt good and had a lot of fun,” Quenneville said Sunday evening. “The Greenfield event is a will-run event, it’s well-staffed with a lot of great volunteers.
“I’m as good as new and good to go.”
That sounds exactly like someone who knows that to finish is to win.
Jason Butynski is a Greenfield native and Recorder sportswriter. His email address is jbutynski@recorder.com. Like him on Facebook and leave your feedback at www.facebook.com/jaybutynski.