William Eugene Fritz, 77, longtime Rowan coach

William Eugene Fritz, 77, of Moorestown, a longtime cross-country and track and field coach at Rowan University, died Thursday, May 28, during a medical procedure at Cooper University Hospital, his wife said.

He retired from the university last year.

Ringo Adamson, the head women's track and cross-country coach at Rowan, recalled Mr. Fritz's encouraging him to do well in high school. Adamson then ran for Mr. Fritz in college.

Adamson's oldest son was born while he was at Rowan, and Mr. Fritz would give him money out of his own pocket to pay for food.

Adamson recalled that when he was struggling personally and academically, Mr. Fritz told him, "You're good, but you could be more than good." Adamson thought then that Mr. Fritz was talking about running.

Now he gets it, he said: "He was talking about life." Adamson is organizing a cross-country meet this fall in Mr. Fritz's honor.

Rowan athletic director Dan Gilmore, in a statement Friday, said, "He was an excellent coach but even a better man. Bill touched the lives of numerous student athletes during his 43 years at the university. He was highly respected among the running community and will be greatly missed."

Born May 27, 1938, in Pierre, S.D., Bill Fritz began running cross-country in high school - "I loved it right away," he told The Inquirer in March - and would run a five-mile newspaper delivery route.

He received his bachelor's degree, in health and physical education, from Northern State University in 1960. Five years later, he received his master's degree from South Dakota State University.

Mr. Fritz spent about a decade coaching in high schools and colleges, including South Dakota State and Southern Illinois University. Then he began looking elsewhere, seeking better weather than in the Midwest.

He found himself at what was then Glassboro State College, where he spent more than four decades coaching men's cross-country, men's track and field, and sometimes the women's programs.

During the summer, Mr. Fritz held informal track meets for the youths in and around Glassboro.

In 1981, a mother who left California with her two young children brought them to one of those meets, trying to encourage the interest they showed in running.

"He gave them, each one of them, their first medals," said Susan Enger Myers. "They still have the medals he pulled out of his black track bag and gave them for winning the race."

Those kids, Rex and Tyler, went back, week after week, all summer.

On April 8, 1992, Myers married the "nice man with the black bag with medals in it."

At Rowan, Mr. Fritz made the running program stronger than it had ever been. The men's cross-country team won 19 New Jersey Athletic Conference championships, including a 17-year streak from 1974 to 1990.

The women's cross-country team won that championship in 1992, 1993, and 1994; that last year, it also won the NCAA Division III Mideast Region Championship for the first time.

"He wanted to win, certainly he did, but he wanted them to have fun," Myers said, remembering how her husband would counsel his students: "Run your own race, run your own pace. Do that in life, too, and you'll come out the winner in the end. If you don't run the race, you can't win."

As assistant and head coach of Rowan's track and field programs, Mr. Fritz similarly led the teams to a number of victories over the years, including 23 NJAC men's titles.

He was named coach of the year by various groups, for multiple sports, time and again, including NCAA Indoor and Outdoor Men's Track and Field Mideast Region Coach of the Year in 1997 and NJAC Coach of the Year in 2004.

"It was so many times, I don't think he ever documented it," Myers said. "He wouldn't care" about those accolades, she said, focusing his attention on his students.

Others, including Rowan, have tallied some of those accomplishments: 69 NCAA Division 3 national champions, 277 All-Americans, 44 NJAC champions.

Rex Myers remembered his stepfather as being happy, always - "negativity didn't exist in him."

"You ever hear him say anything bad?" he asked his mother.

"No, never, just kept moving along," Susan Enger Myers said.

"There was a lesson to be learned in everything," Rex Myers said.

After Mr. Fritz retired from Rowan last year, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. It was unclear how he died, his wife said, because the cancer had appeared to be under control before he appeared jaundiced.

At the hospital, he spent two days in the emergency room before spending nearly a week as an inpatient, Myers said. He died during a liver biopsy, she said.

Besides his wife and sons, he is survived by son Karl; daughter Billi Dudley; seven grandchildren; and a step-grandchild.

Arrangements for a memorial service have not been finalized, his wife said, but it is expected to be at Rowan in June.