John Hegarty Jr. never spent a day as a varsity head coach but he may have had as much impact on high school athletes as anyone.

Hegarty, 54, will retire at the end of the school year after nearly three decades as an assistant coach and science teacher at Cedar Rapids Jefferson. He has accepted the School District’s incentive on early retirement.

The son of a grade-school principal, Hegarty was a J-Hawk wrestling assistant for 28 years and a football aide for 11. Jefferson named its junior varsity wrestling tournament the John Hegarty Jr. JV Duals a couple years ago.

Many schools have been fortunate enough to have staff members like Hegarty, coaches who labor for years in the background as an assistant. Jefferson has had a few in the past with wrestling assistants Jim Cox and John Weld.

“Earlier in my career, I got my fix as a head sophomore football coach,’’ Hegarty said. “I was pretty much on my own after two-a-days. In wrestling, I probably could have gone to a smaller school as a head coach. But the bottom line was that I just loved Jefferson.

“I guess I had a knack for picking up the pieces that head coaches might not have had time for. I kind of crafted roles for myself without ever having the pressure of being a head coach. As the years went by, I got more and more satisfaction from the teaching aspect. I could talk to kids one-on-one about making progress, setting goals and getting their maximum effort.’’

Hegarty is a 1975 Jefferson graduate. Aside from a few years at elementary and middle schools and a couple years at Washington, he has been a J-Hawk.

One of Hegarty’s passions was being involved with athletes who couldn’t make the varsity. He experienced that himself when he was a backup to state wrestling champions Jed Brown and Jim Comreid at Jefferson.

“I’m going to miss the science department a lot,’’ Hegarty said. “But I’m also going to miss seeing the freshmen come in and then see them four years later as someone you hardly recognize.’’

Hegarty, under head coach Dick Briggs, was involved in some deep and talented teams in the late 1980s and early 1990s. One of his favorite memories involved Mark Ironside, former J-Hawk champion who went on to greatness at Iowa.

“In Mark’s freshman year, he was the fourth guy on the depth chart,’’ he said. “We had two state qualifiers and a placewinner ahead of him. That team got second at state and the next week we were involved in the regional duals. Our state champion at that weight (125 pounds) didn’t make weight, so we moved Mark up and he beat a state placewinner from Waterloo West.’’

For every Mark Ironside, there were dozens of others who never cracked the starting lineup. But Hegarty worked with the junior varsity and sophomore wrestlers as if they all were state champions.

“I’ll never forget my last year in wrestling, Rob Martin and I took a team that had no business finishing in the upper half of the Mississippi Valley Conference tournament, and we ended up winning it. In all the years, I am hard-pressed to think of a team that at the end of the year I thought to myself, 'God, I’m glad that’s over.’"

Well, it is for Hegarty, but he’s not going away. He will do more work at the Dwight Hughes Nursery and continue to be Scott Unash’s color commentator on high school football coverage on KGYM 1600-AM.

NOTE: There will be a reception for Hegarty Sunday, May 27 from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Chrome Horse Saloon.

(Mark Dukes is former sports editor of the Cedar Rapid Gazette. He is co-host of The Gym Class radio show weekdays from 3-4 p.m. on KGYM-AM 1600 and FM-106.3.)