OLD LYME – Back in the mid-to-late-70s, Jan Merrill-Morin was one of America’s top female runners. She held American and world records on the track. She was a silver medalist at the World Cross Country championships. She was also a finalist in the 1,500 meters at the Montreal Olympics in 1976.
In the early 90s, Merrill-Morin coached one of the state’s best female distance runners, Liz Mueller, at Waterford High School. She has coached at Rutgers and Coast Guard.
Merrill-Morin, 69, went back to high school coaching a few years ago and now she is guiding another of the state’s top female distance runners, Chase Gilbert of Old Lyme. Merrill-Morin started coaching at Old Lyme before spring track season in 2024 and Gilbert, already a talent, has blossomed.
“I think people now might not know names like Coach Jan’s from her athletic period 40 years ago but I’m a very big fan of the sport,” Gilbert said. “I think it’s so cool to be coached by somebody like that. I see myself in the future, I want to follow in my coach’s footsteps.”
Gilbert finished second to Brooke Strauss of Glastonbury, now at UConn, at the New England cross country championships last fall. This year, she won two New England titles – indoors while setting a meet record in the mile and outdoors in the 1,600 meters. Old Lyme’s girls outdoor track team won its first-ever Class S state title two years ago and backed it up with another last season.
Old Lyme senior Chase Gilbert and her coach Jan Merrill-Morin stand next to the two outdoor track state championship banners at the Old Lyme High School track last week. (Photo by Lori Riley)
Even with all her experience in the sport, Merrill-Morin says she is still learning from athletes like Gilbert, who will run at Virginia next year.
“I’m open to suggestions because she’s the one doing the running,” Merrill-Morin said. “You need to open up and look at different horizons. She is so talented.”
The beginning
Merrill-Morin ran at Waterford when there was only track but no cross country for girls. Two years after she graduated in 1974, she was at the Montreal Olympics, running in the final of the 1,500 meters, which was the longest race for women at the time.
In 1976, her time of 4:02.61 was the American 1,500-meter record and the next year, she set the U.S. mile record (4:30.98). She was a gold medalist in the 1,500 at the 1975 Pan Am Games and the 3,000 at the 1979 Pan Am Games. She won 11 national titles in track and cross country and held the world record in the 5,000 meters three times (her personal best was 15:30.6 in 1980). In 1980, she was the silver medalist at the World Cross Country championships.
She started coaching in 1988 at Waterford High and Mueller, who won the prestigious then-Kinney Foot Locker National cross country championship, was her first star.
Merrill-Morin also coached at Coast Guard, then Rutgers as an assistant for eight years before returning to high school, coaching at Old Saybrook and then moving to Old Lyme.
Jeff Morin, Jan’s husband, is her assistant coach in indoor and outdoor track. He sees the same drive in Gilbert that his wife had so many years ago.
“There’s a similarity between the two of them in respect to how they were when they were the same age,” he said. “If we take Jan and move her back to when she was young – after she got out (of school) and was training – she just had a desire to really want to do as much as she could with the express idea of getting better.
“What I see in Chase is the exact same thing in terms of she also wants to do as much as she can to get better. There’s a tremendous amount of trust between the two.”
Gilbert, who played soccer, basketball and lacrosse in middle school and started running in seventh grade, first crossed paths with Merrill-Morin after Gilbert won the 1,600 meters named after her future coach at an invitational track meet at Old Saybrook her freshman year.
“I knew who she was,” Gilbert said. “We didn’t talk that much but she used to give me advice.”
Gilbert didn’t run cross country until high school, and impressively finished third as a freshman at the State Open behind Strauss and Trumbull’s Kathryn Marchand. Her sophomore year, she won the Class S title but injured her right glute a few days after the race and couldn’t run in the Open. Last year, she won her third Class S title and finished third at the State Open behind Strauss and Conard’s Liv Sherry.
Lyme-Old Lyme’s Chase Gilbert reacts to her record time of 4:44.68 at the State Open Championships at the Floyd Little Athletic Center, New Haven, Conn., Feb. 22, 2025. Photo by Cloe Poisson/Special to the Courant
Sherry and Strauss have graduated; there are other younger runners who will challenge her, but this is Gilbert’s senior year and she’s ready.
“Before I was coached by Coach Jan, I was kind of going off ambition or whatever I wanted to do in training; I didn’t understand how it all pieced together,” Gilbert said. “I’ve gained knowledge on how to train, how much to train – I’m learning every day.”
Merrill-Morin sometimes has to keep Gilbert from overdoing it.
“Some days are harder than others,” Gilbert said. “It varies with time of the season, time of the year. Some of them, I’m hands on knees after but some, after, I’m feeling good. I could do more. Coach is like, ‘That’s all we’re going to do today.’”
The Shoreline championship on Oct. 16 is most likely Gilbert’s next big race. She’s won the title the last three years. She will go for her fourth Class S championship Oct. 25 at Wickham Park.
Last Saturday, she finished second at the Ocean State Invitational (18:02) in Rhode Island behind Westford Academy’s Abigail Hennessy (17:35), 11 seconds faster than last year.
“I think my relationship with Coach Jan – sophomore year it was getting to know her when she first came over, then junior year, and now we joke around with each other all the time,” Gilbert said. “Training’s fun but we’re also serious about it.
“She’s a great person to talk to. We’re both fans of the sport. We both love running.”
