Well-respected educator and football coach Chris Bartolucci died as a result of cancer on June 4, leaving behind a legion of people he positively impacted.
In a Facebook post published earlier today, the Sudbury Spartans Football Club offered their remembrance of Bartolucci, crediting him as the most-successful high school football coach in Sudbury’s history.
During his 30 years of coaching football, he led his teams to 12 senior titles and three junior titles.
“He was a man who demanded his students and athletes carry themselves through life following the (St. Charles College) pillars of Goodness, Discipline and Knowledge,” they wrote. “He expected no less.”
Decades-long friend and colleague Rob Zanatta has a unique perspective on Bartolucci, having known him as a student, colleague and friend. Zanatta first met Bartolucci in 1983, when Bartolucci was his Grade 9 teacher at St. Charles College.
Zanatta would go on to work alongside Bartolucci as an educator and football coach until Bartolucci retired at the start of 2007, with the two remaining friends ever since.
“He spoke from the heart to everybody, he spoke the truth,” Zanatta said. “He was beloved by everybody – students, players, on teams and staff as well, he just had a phenomenal personality.
“He was a true motivator as a coach and brought out the best in everybody, but he also treated everybody with such respect.”
In addition to his role as an educator, including most recently as head of religious studies prior to his retirement, Bartolucci is credited with helping breathe new life into the local football community, which Zanatta said was beginning to dwindle in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Bartolucci was a founding member of the Joe MacDonald Youth Football League, which Zanatta credits with helping bring young people into the sport and fostering lifelong interest in the activity that has helped renew the sport in Greater Sudbury.
After spending his high school years at St. Charles, Bartolucci went to Laurentian University where he studied sociology and religion. From there he went to teacher's college and returned to teach at St. Charles in 1976. He was hired to teach religion, which he proceeded to do for the balance of his career alongside coaching a few sports, but most notably football.
“I was proud I was at St. Charles my whole career,” Bartolucci told Northern Life in 2007, shortly after his retirement.
“It never crossed my mind to leave and I always wanted to be there. I left with no regrets. I left more in the school than I took out of it. I was happy to have had a positive impact on people's lives. It might have been small, but I was a part of people's success as they moved on through life.”
Football, he said at the time, taught him a great deal about himself.
“Winning was important because of what it represented, which was hard work. Nothing comes easy and you have to work for it. That's what I tried to pass on to kids.”
The top thing Bartolucci said that he was proud of during his 2007 interview with Northern Life was his sons Jimmy and Michael, and family.
“I am also proud of the fact I was able to do what I did with respect and dignity,” he added. “That's what I tried to pass onto my students and athletes.”
In 2006, Bartolucci was named the recipient of the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations’ Colin Hood award for coaching, which goes to a coach who best demonstrates the value of school sport and teaching lifelong lessons. The Sudbury District Secondary School Athletic Association also established an award in his name.
For Bartolucci’s retirement, Zanatta said the school came together with 1,000 students to celebrate his career during a special assembly in the gymnasium.
“The study body just loved him,” Zanatta said.
After Bartolucci retired, he returned to school to help with coaching on a few occasions. The retired teacher also kept up with faculty, local coaches and friends with Saturday morning breakfasts that were held until the pandemic began, as well as on the golf course.
Bartolucci was “a true family man, a true friend,” Zanatta said. “I don’t think anybody could say a bad word against him. Even if they were coaching against him and it was competitive and everything else, it was always a great respect for him.”
Bartolucci’s obituary notes that donations can be made in his memory to the Joe MacDonald Youth Football League’s Legacy Fund or to the Northern Cancer Foundation.
He leaves behind his wife, Patti, his two sons and four grandchildren. Bartolucci is the brother of Rick Bartolucci, the longtime Sudbury Liberal MP and cabinet minister.
A gathering of friends will take place from 2 to 9 p.m. on Thursday at the Jackson and Barnard Funeral Home at 233 Larch St., with prayers at 3 p.m. Mass of Christian burial will be held at Our Lady of Hope Church, at 591 Brennan Rd. at 10:30 a.m. on Friday.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
