Jim DayDay's Redcoats wrestlers finished either first or second in the Connecticut state title race from 1985 to 1994 ... then earned four state team championships from 1999 through 2003. Day could also claim 20 conference crowns and four individual New England tournament champs. In his nearly three decades as wrestling coach at the high school located just outside Hartford, Day tallied nearly 450 victories.
Day also served as a special education instructor, and, for a time, was Berlin High's athletic director.
"It's a devastating loss," current school athletic director Jeff Mauri, told The Citizen newspaper . "The amount of lives he touched is unmatched."
It would appear that coach Day and the community he served were a great match.
"He taught a lot of life lessons that get lost nowadays, especially in sports," said former local youth wrestling coach Roger Moss. "It's a gap we're going to have a hard time filing."
"I think coaches are successful because they land in a community that has the same values, or at least a group in that community has the same values as the coach does," Day said in a 2011 interview with The Citizen. "I don't think that the level of commitment that I expected in wrestling would have flown in many communities. But in Berlin, that hard-work ethic, focus and passion -- there were a group of people that believed in that. That's why it flourished. It very easily could have failed in another community."
Berlin school superintendent Brian Benigni weighed in with his thoughts of the long-time high school wrestling coach.
"Jim loved Berlin. And he loved the kids," Benigni told the Hartford Courant. "He died way too young. He was an icon in town. Former teacher. Former athletic director. Excellent coach. He built the wrestling program into one of the best in the state."
"Honestly, he was the best coach I ever had," former Berlin wrestler and New England champion Nick Arborio told the New Britain Herald. "He was always in my corner, always giving me advice. He meant the world to me and to the wrestling team. He put his heart and soul into the program."
Day was inducted into the New England Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2004 and the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, Connecticut Chapter in 2010 while also becoming the driving force in the creation of Berlin's own athletic hall of fame in 2008, which welcomed him in 2011.
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