Jonas Koolsbergen earned his 500th win as Harvard-Westlake’s track and field coach in a Mission League meet that included the Wolverines, Alemany, Crespi and Louisville on April 10.
“Either I’ve done a good job or I’m old or I’m both,” Koolsbergen said with a laugh. “It was special and it was the accumulation of a lot of years and a lot of coaching and a lot of effort and a lot of, hopefully, doing things the right way. It felt meaningful, even more than I was expecting.”
Koolsbergen has coached track and field at Harvard-Westlake for 39 seasons. He’s also an alumnus of the school and competed in track and field for four years and cross country for two years before graduating in 1983.
He went on to compete as a decathlete at UC Santa Barbara and came in fifth place at what is now known as the Big West Championships in his junior year. Koolsbergen was an assistant coach at the Harvard School for three seasons before it merged with the Westlake School for Girls to become Harvard-Westlake, then assumed the role of head coach in 1989.
He’s been the only head coach for Harvard-Westlake track and field and has seen the sport change dramatically in his time at the helm.
“One good friend of mine from my graduating class — when we reflected on it a few years later when I started coaching here and we started doing impressive things in the California state meet — he’s like, when we were students at Harvard-Westlake, the state meet might as well have been the Olympics because we weren’t going to that,” Koolsbergen said.
Koolsbergen has coached seven student-athletes to CIF state titles in his time as head coach. His 500th win came on the day that junior Pierce Neirick cleared 6 feet, 3 inches to set a new school record in high jump.
Harvard-Westlake will compete in the Mission League prelims on Monday and the league finals on April 25. Individual as well as team champions will be named for the first time in league history.
The league finals could also serve as a primer for the CIF Southern Section prelims and finals, which are slated for May 4 and May 11, respectively.
Just more opportunities for Koolsbergen to add to his winning resume.
“It’s a rewarding and extraordinary accomplishment,” Koolsbergen said, “but it is also the testimony of fantastic young people that I’ve had the privilege to work with and extraordinary assistant coaches that have helped to make so many great things happen here.”
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