Coach John 

John Barbour has been Liberty’s USATF-certified coach since 2015.  For nearly 40 years he has coached at every level from middle school to post-collegiate, starting with Emory University’s women distance runners in the 1980s.  After moving to New England he served as coach for his own club, the Greater Lowell Road Runners (1998-2006), as well as Gloucester High School’s boys (1998-2001), including a pair of state champions and a quartet that set a national scholastic record for the indoor distance medley relay that lasted 17 years.

While on the north shore he coached 7th-8th grade cross country/track at Beverly’s Glen Urquhart School (2006-14) and started from scratch the indoor track program for grades 7-12 at Manchester-Essex Regional (2008-14), a school with no track facilities.  After coming to Boston he coached at Ursuline Academy (2014-17) before joining Liberty.

Barbour has been in love with the sport since seeing the 1962 US-USSR track meet at Stanford University at age eight, and was inside Munich’s Olympic Stadium when Frank Shorter won the 1972 Olympic marathon.  As a runner he twice qualified for the Olympic Marathon Trials (1988 and 1996), with personal records of 29:33 (10K) and 2:19:26 (marathon).  He continues to train and race actively as an age-group athlete and was USATF’s 65-69 Male Runner of the Year for 2019.  He has contributed to New England Runner magazine for over twenty years, where he is a Senior Writer.

Past Liberty Coaches

 The list of Liberty’s coaches at both youth and adult levels mirrors the growth of the sport through seven-plus decades, from founder Bud McManis to impeccable record-keeper Ken McKenna, Jeff Johnson, ground-breaker Jeri Dorso and beyond.  Dorso was a Liberty athlete who “inherited” the club in 1972 when Johnson moved west (to join new company called Nike, a name he’d suggested), and received some “she’s just a girl” coverage from local media before proceeding to prove that she was as good a coach as anyone.

Liberty AC coaches:
Bud McManis (1948-70)
Ken McKenna (1954-99)
Jeff Johnson (1969-72)
Jeri (Dorso) Screnci (1972-74)
John Babington (1974-93)
Bill Squires (1994-97)
Bob Hodge (1997-99)
Mick Grant (1999-2000)
John Caputo (2000?)
Chris Anderson (2001-11)
Leslie Welch Lehane (2000-06)
Cathy Utzschneider (2006-15)
John Barbour (2015-present)