Bay Shore's Borbet: National Coach of the Year

Add one more piece of hardware to Steve Borbet’s illustrious resume.

Borbet was named the Mike Byrnes Coach of the Year by the National Scholastic Sports Foundation. Borbet was the 10th recipient of the award, which was given out on the final day of the New Balance Outdoor Nationals last Sunday at Greensboro, North Carolina.

Borbet has been a coach at Bay Shore since 1975 after spending his first two years at Holy Trinity. He founded the Marauders girls cross country and track programs in 1976-77 and also had stints at Stony Brook University and Half Hollow Hills, along with coaching the Bay Shore boys team for a while.

The longtime coach’s results have been nothing short of spectacular. Borbet has coached seven individual national champions (including Jessica Gelibert’s victory in the 400 hurdles—which happened to come five minutes after Borbet accepted his award, by the way) and six national champion relay teams (including a Suffolk-record 800-meter sprint medley team this season). He’s also coached 19 state champions, two Penn Relay champions, and—as Borbet himself would probably say—too many county championships to count.

His success expands beyond what his athletes do out on the track, though. An astonishing 51 of his former athletes have gone on to coach cross country and/or track—including several current Long Island coaches—and his wife Kathie is the boys cross country and track coach at Smithtown East.