The Flynn Field Makeover

Last month, the Mountain Lakes community honored the patriarch of the Lakers lacrosse family by dedicating a newly turfed field to longtime high school coach Tim Flynn.

The Flynn Field weekend celebration began Friday evening, April 24, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony after the high school lacrosse practice. Numerous Laker alumni were on hand along with distinguished members of the Board of Education, the school administration, and the community at large.

The festivities continued with Laker Lacrosse Saturday, which included a varsity lacrosse game on Wilkins Field with youth teams and alumni in attendance, as well as youth lacrosse games on Flynn Field. The schedule of events concluded with a gathering at Hapgood’s, a local favorite.

A Lasting Legacy

The winningest coach in New Jersey history, Flynn is the first and only coach of the Mountain Lakes High School lacrosse team, taking the position when the program was created during the 1979–80 school year. His accomplishments are eye-popping: he entered this season with 759 career wins, most in the state, including 16 state championships, 14 Morris County championships, and a few dozen league titles, all with the Lakers.

However, despite this incredible success, if you ask Flynn to talk about his program, he will quickly deflect attention away from himself and instead focus on the Laker family. From the players to their families to his assistant coaches to the youth program, Flynn credits their collective efforts and the sense of community and alignment that is in place.

And that community and alignment were on full display during the re-turfing of Flynn Field.

This particular tract of land was first cleared from the woods in the early 1980s because of the lack of available space for the high school and youth sports programs. Originally a grass surface, the practice field was a great addition, but it was not without its shortcomings.

As Flynn noted, it was somewhat rocky and rutted, and after the rain, the pitch was rather muddy. No wonder it was called “The Pit.”

For years, members of the community verbalized the need for a synthetic turf to be installed on the Pit, but nothing ever materialized because of the excessive cost.

However, the state of New Jersey offers funding through various grants to help projects like the one needed in Mountain Lakes. Luckily, former U.S. Senator George Helmy lives in the Borough, and he had knowledge of specific grants that could help.

In a casual conversation in September 2024, Helmy shared information about a post-COVID outdoor space grant with current Mountain Lakes football coach Darrell Fusco. Since Wilkins Field at the high school was the only turf surface in town, the need for another synthetic field was significant, and this grant could provide the funding to make over the Pit.

Fusco and Mountain Lakes Alumni Association president Jamie Rodgers secured the grant from the state, and the project began.

According to Sara Forman, who is a Mountain Lakes Board of Education member, the chair of their facilities committee, and a lacrosse parent herself, the timeline was strict. If deadlines were not met, they would lose the grant. Complicating matters was the fact that the school district did not own the land outright, as it was shared with the town. Superintendent Dr. Brad Siegel and the Board of Education met with the Borough to discuss the transfer of ownership, a legal process that needed to follow a specific protocol.

Current mayor Melissa Muilenburg, who was Deputy Mayor at the time and participated in those meetings, was very pleased with how quickly and smoothly the process played out.

“We knew the urgency. Before (the BOE) could do their part, they had to know that we would convey the land,” she says. “We wanted to support the project. It is an investment in the district, the Board of Education, and all of our kids.”

After the initial joint meetings between the Board of Ed and the Town Council, the Borough acted quickly, and it only took one month and three additional meetings to legally convey the land to the district. Muilenburg remarks, “It was government at its best.”

After the transfer of land, the Mountain Lakes Lacrosse Association approached the Board of Education and asked to name the field after coach Flynn, a request that was well-received by Dr. Siegel and the Board.

“There are few people who invest in kids’ lives the way someone like Coach Flynn does,” says Forman.

That investment by Flynn has resulted in generations of success and brotherhood among his players.

“Tim has always preached family. It is one of the things that impresses me most,” says Mark Walters, who is the son of John Walters, the man who built the Mountain Lakes youth program in the 1970s.The younger Walters scored the first varsity goal in school history and is a longtime assistant to Flynn.

“It is always ‘we’, not ‘me’,” he says of the coaching icon.

Part of that “we” includes Flynn’s wife, Betsy, who has been a pillar of support and a motherly figure from the start.

Betsy Flynn has cooked countless team dinners and made dozens of baby blankets for former players. She performed wedding ceremonies for Laker alumni and is the godmother of several of their children. “Without her, it all wouldn’t work the way it does,” the coach says about his wife.

A distinction leader and pillar of the community, Coach Flynn has been the heart of this lacrosse family for 46 years, and despite his humility, he does acknowledge this well-deserved recognition. “I can’t even begin to say what a humbling honor it is that the Laker family recognized the Flynn family,” he admits.

But in true Tim Flynn character, he was quick to turn the attention back to others when talking about the field. “My name is on it. But it is a family heirloom,” he says. And like any other heirloom, the field is being passed on to the Mountain Lakes community for all to enjoy.

More Work to Come!

Additional funding is needed to complete the project. Upgrades not covered by the grant include a new scoreboard, bleachers, a paved walkway, a stone recognition wall, and a stairway reconstruction.

For more information/to support the upgrades, contact Jamie Rodgers at support@mountainlakesalumni.org.

Rich Luttenberger is a lifelong Morris County resident and a recently retired teacher from Morris Knolls High School. He is also a writer and occasional podcast host for the “Sons of Saturday,” a multimedia platform focused on Virginia Tech sports.

Photographs by Antonietta Henry