‘My Blood is Purple’: Jim Kavanagh to retire after 52 years at Holy Cross

“I had no expectation ever to come to Holy Cross.” 

It was the first thing noted by a coyly smiling Jim Kavanagh, sitting in his office at the Hart Center at the Luth Athletic Complex, overlooking the Hart Track on a breezy spring afternoon. For someone who graduated from Boston College — historically, a bitter rival of the Crusaders — in the late 1960s, that’s perhaps not the most surprising statement. But it is perhaps a rather ironic statement to hear from one of the longest-tenured head coaches in the Holy Cross athletic department’s history.

Kavanagh’s office is a time capsule of sorts for Holy Cross track and field. It’s filled with stacks and stacks of paper records, accumulated over his 52 seasons with the Crusaders, 46 of which have been as head coach of the cross country and men’s track and field programs, and 22 of which have been as the Richard L. Ahern ’51 Director of Cross Country and Track and Field. Artwork created by former student-athletes adorn the walls, and letters, trophies and framed photographs sit upon his desk. His office is an encapsulation of the wisdom he has bestowed upon so many, and the number of lives he has impacted.

Kavanagh announced on Monday, May 2 that he will retire following the conclusion of the 2022 outdoor season. For someone who never expected to come to Holy Cross, Kavanagh’s fond reflections on his career — which has spanned across six different decades — are overflowing with love and reverence.

The road to that love for Holy Cross was not exactly direct. In one of his first introductions to the Holy Cross community, at a Varsity Club dinner, he was presented as “Jim Kavanagh, who will work with our track and cross country programs  — and he went to school in Boston.” 

The quick-witted 24-year-old Kavanagh stood up and thanked the crowd, and added: “I did go to school in Boston, and the name of that school is Boston College. Furthermore, although I'm going to be here with the cross country and track programs, I'm actually being sent here on missionary work.”

Kavanagh thought the joke was hysterical, but it certainly didn’t land in a room full of what Kavanagh refers to, tongue-in-cheek, as “purple-blooded former athletes.” 

“You could hear a pin drop,” he said.

It certainly took some time for Kavanagh to grow into his shared identity as both a proud Eagle and a purple-blooded Crusader. A 1974 inductee into the Boston College Varsity Club Hall of Fame, it’s no wonder that Kavanagh feels such pride for his alma mater, as one of the most versatile athletes ever to wear the maroon and gold.  

In track, he was a three-time New England Champion, twice in the discus and once in the shot put. Kavanagh competed three times at the NCAAs as a hammer thrower, finishing second during his senior seasons. He additionally qualified for the 1968 Olympic Trials in the 16-pound hammer throw, finishing 10th with a career-best toss of 199’11”. He was a four-time All-American in the hammer and weight throw, an NCAA qualifier in the discus and the third-place finisher in the East Coast AAU decathlon championship. During his final two seasons at Boston College, he was a member of the football team, and was eventually drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs. 

There was always something about track that spoke to him, more so than football. One day, a reporter followed him around to his track practices, where he went out with his hammers and discus, and stayed on the field for hours — sometimes alone, sometimes with only two or three others. The reporter couldn’t understand why Kavanagh would want to play a football game in front of 20,000 people on a Saturday and then go to a track meet with only a dozen or so people watching. 

Kavanagh said: “As an athlete, the way I interpret it is, when you're in a team sport, sometimes it's easy to deflect criticism, and absorb all the praise, but to deflect criticism. The difference with track and field was, it truly was a sport, where you got out of it what you put into it.

“You train for this moment. And the moment is over, not in 60 minutes, the moment is over in 30 seconds or 10 seconds. And I just liked that pressure. It was a way to show that I had earned something.”

Coming out of high school at La Salle Academy in Providence, R.I., Kavanagh knew he wanted to be a coach. One of his biggest mentors at La Salle, his coach, Pete Curtin, brought Kavanagh back to coach there after his stint in the NFL. Shortly after he moved back to Rhode Island, however, a group of Holy Cross coaches and supporters reached out, including coaches Tom Duffy and Skip O’Connor, and asked if he would be willing to join the Holy Cross staff as an assistant coach. 

He was initially hesitant, due to there being gaps in representation in the field events at the time at Holy Cross. Knowing Kavanagh’s expertise, however, they believed he would be a natural fit to build Holy Cross’ depth in those events — and eventually, he agreed. He always had an appreciation for Holy Cross, the passion of its community and its Jesuit ideals. 

Kavanagh was raised in an Irish Catholic family in Rhode Island, so those Jesuit principles at Holy Cross — men and women for and with others — were no different from what he had been taught growing up, and what he has lived his entire life. Above all, Kavanagh’s goal is always to run a classy program, and his demeanor as a coach is consistent with his demeanor in all other areas of his life. He values patience and relationships, and treats his athletes with care. 

Any form of criticism comes in a private conversation, in the form of mentorship — never public humiliation. Kavanagh understands that for all the power a track and field athlete possesses, when it comes to competition, the coach lacks the power in that very moment. When you’re the one competing, you have all of the ability to control your next move in a race. But if you’re a coach, you can only support and suggest ahead of time, and guide, adjust and help improve after. Kavanagh’s job, in his eyes, is to draw from his experiences as a competitor at the highest level, and bestow his wisdom garnered from several decades of coaching.

“What makes it difficult as a track coach is that you don't have one or two events…you might have 50 chances for winning and losing,” Kavanagh said. “So the highs and lows for a coach are incredible in track and field. And yet, that's what makes it so exciting. You can be happy for that kid that wins the 100 or gets a personal best in the 800. And then at the same time, you've got to figure out, how do I pick up the pieces for that poor kid that just had a terrible race, maybe got tripped or something?

“There’s got to be an empathy for what those people are going through. And if you're too quick to criticize, then I think sometimes you'll miss the point. That’s part of being a coach. You’re going to win together, and you’re going to lose together. And on those bad days, you have to be able to console each other, but also come up with a plan to be more successful next time.”

Of course, not all athletes will agree with how to reach that route to success. He remembers one athlete who disagreed with some of his advice, and he recalls his guidance during a conversation between the two.

“My job is not to do everything you want me to do,” he told that athlete. “My job actually is much bigger than that. My job is to somehow find a way to get you to become better than you ever thought you could be — not what you are, but what you could be.”

And he reminisces about another conversation with another athlete, who could always identify his own issues within a race, but didn’t make the adjustments needed to improve upon those issues: 

“I got tired of him telling me that there's always a reason he's not able to do such-and-such. So I said, well, it's just a matter of, how long do you want to live the dream this way, and always have an excuse for why it didn't happen? When are you going to change course, and suddenly decide — I'm gonna work harder at it, I'm going to take more risks, and see where this takes me?”

Kavanagh has been at Holy Cross through the evolution of the track facilities from a pear-shaped track in the current location of the baseball field’s warning track, to the construction of the Luth Athletic Complex and the standard 400-meter Hart Track.

One of the most significant changes since the early 1970s, though, has been that Kavanagh has fully embraced being a Crusader. And simultaneously, as he came around to being a Crusader, he would eventually even be introduced by the Holy Cross faithful as “Jim Kavanagh, from Boston College.” 

His devotion to Holy Cross grew stronger and stronger — but his sense of humor over the years didn’t change one bit.

“My love for Holy Cross just got deeper and deeper as we went along,” Kavanagh said. “And it certainly wasn't intentional at first. I wasn't trying to convert myself. I was trying to convert them to be more like BC.” 

Despite his initial resistance, Kavanagh became one of those purple-blooded former athletes. 

“Now, more and more,” he said, “I might even make a comment, like: ‘I was working on the hurdles today and cut my hand, and I was shocked to see that my blood is purple.’”

During his retirement, he looks forward to spending more time with his wife, Liz, and his children and grandson. But Kavanagh won’t be a stranger to Holy Cross going forward. After all, Holy Cross has been such a fundamental part of his life — it has presented challenges and excitement, and the Holy Cross community has been there through joy and sadness in his own life.

Because of Holy Cross, Kavanagh’s extended family has grown — maybe not by literal blood relation, but certainly by purple blood relation.

“Every successive year, I had more and more people in my family from Holy Cross — we were really taking in the student athletes that came on any particular year,” he said. “My wife would always ask me, ‘how can you possibly do this? Every year, you're saying goodbye to 10 of the men and 10 of the women? It’s got to be difficult to say goodbye.’

“And I said, ‘Well, if you look at it that way, yeah, that's true. But that's not the way I look at it. What happens is, every year, you add more people to the family. And the ones that are leaving or graduating…they're still part of Holy Cross.”