By Philip R. Devlin
(March 31, 2025) — History has shown that Haddam-Killingworth High School’s first administrative team of Superintendent Roland Jolie, Principal George Fitch, and Athletic Director Patsy Kamercia made some wise personnel choices.
First, Jolie and Fitch chose Patsy to be the first female high school Athletic Director in Connecticut state history. She then selected a coaching staff that distinguished itself in many ways. Three of those original coaches—Mark Brookes (baseball), Rich Langer (volleyball), and Patsy herself (field hockey)— are all members of the Connecticut High School Coaches Association’s Hall of Fame, an incredible achievement for such a small school! Amazingly, however, two of those original coaches, Mark Brookes and Dick Dupuis, are now in their fiftieth year of coaching kids at our local high school!
Current HKHS athletic director, Lynne Flint, is very happy to have them in her corner. “Dick Dupuis and Mark Brookes are not only among the best high school coaches in the country, but also two of the finest individuals I’ve had the privilege of knowing. As an Athletic Director, I’ve learned so much from watching and listening to them. When I started at HK at 24, I stepped into a department led by five dedicated head coaches: Richard Langer, Dennis O’Rourke, Patsy Kamercia, Dick Dupuis, and Mark Brookes. These individuals made my transition as a young woman in athletics as smooth as possible. To this day, Dick and Mark remain invaluable mentors. I rely on their experience, value their insight, and deeply appreciate all they do for HK. I wouldn’t be where I am without them.”
Mark Brookes was born and raised in Haddam and still lives here. He played baseball on Haddam’s first Little League team in 1963. Since Haddam did not have a high school until the 1974-1975 school year, Mark attended Middletown High School, graduating in 1969. He was a star basketball and baseball player at MHS and is a member of that school’s athletic Hall of Fame. He then went on to play baseball at Maryville College in Tennessee, where he was captain his senior year, as well as the team’s MVP. Coach Brookes is also a member of the Haddam-Killingworth Hall of Fame and was inducted into the CHSCA Hall of Fame in 2007. Additionally, he was named Connecticut’s High School Baseball Coach of the Year in 2002 and was a finalist for national baseball coach of the year that year as well.
(Photo above from the first HKHS Yearbook, Opticon, 1978)
Many area coaches believe that winning the Shoreline Conference Championship in both baseball and softball is harder than winning a state championship. Mark’s teams have won nine Shoreline Conference titles, the last one being in 2010. His teams also have been in the state championship final game six times and won the title in 2023. More than 30 of his players have been named to the All-State team. Significantly, Coach Brookes has won 764 games as a high school coach, the second highest win total in Connecticut state high school baseball history!
A high school social studies teacher at HKHS for many years, and the HK athletic director for several years, Dick Dupuis of Higganum also was the school’s cross-country and indoor track head coach for decades. He now begins his 50th year as the school’s outdoor coach. A Maine native, Coach Dupuis began running track in high school more than sixty years ago and his interest in the sport has never waned. Like Mark Brookes, Dick’s list of accomplishments as a coach is long and impressive. He, too, is a member of the Haddam-Killingworth Hall of Fame. Dick was named the New Haven Register Coach of the Year in 2021 and has been the CHSCA’s most outstanding outdoor track coach three times: 1988, 1994, and 1995.
(Photo above from the first HKHS Yearbook, Opticon, 1978)
His outdoor track teams have won the state championship six times in his career and both his Girls and Boys teams have won the Shoreline Conference titles numerous times. Most recently, the HKHS girls won the Shoreline Conference Championship in 2014, 2021 and 2022, while the boys won in 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2024. Dozens of his athletes have earned All-State honors over the years, and several have qualified and competed in national championship meets as well, some even earning All-American status.
Full Disclosure: I was one of Mark Brookes’s assistant coaches for eleven years, and he is one of my best friends. I know from firsthand experience of coaching with him that all the various awards he has amassed are nice, but the most important aspect of coaching for him has always been the satisfaction that he has gotten over the years in helping hundreds of athletes become both better ballplayers and, more importantly, better people. The same can be said for my brother-in-law, Dick Dupuis. Last year, one of his athletes gave him a mug with this inscription: “A truly great coach is hard to find, difficult to part with and impossible to forget.” It would be hard to find a motto more fitting for both of these two coaches who have, incredibly, given fifty years of their lives to many hundreds of local kids in the Region 17 School District.
Photo of Mark Brookes and Dick Dupuis by Philip R. Devlin
