Athletics

Albany High girls' basketball coach Leslie Bogucki

retires from coaching after 26 years

Albany High School girls’ basketball coach Leslie Bogucki, whose resume features a state championship and two sectional titles, has announced her retirement from coaching after a 26-year career that included three sports and experience at the high school and college levels.

Bogucki led the Lady Falcons to a 12-10 record last winter in her 18^th season as Albany’s head coach. She compiled a career record of 214-181, including Section II and New York state Class AA championships in 1996-97, and a follow-up sectional title in 1997-98.

She also coached softball and volleyball early in her career at Albany, and was        Leslie Bogucki led Albany's girls' basket-

the Union College women’s volleyball        ball team to the school's only team state

coach from 1992-2000. Bogucki will          title.

continue in her role as a physical

education teacher at Albany School of Humanities, where she has taught for 13 of her 23 years in the City School District of Albany.

She also will continue to operate the Albany Youth Hoops for Girls clinic for students in grades 2-6, which begins its 13^th year on April 23.

On March 28, she enjoyed her final team banquet as head coach when the Lady Falcons gathered at the Clarion Inn on Watervliet Avenue to recap their season. You can read more about Bogucki's career in the March 29 Times Union.

“The highlight would have to be the kids I have had the opportunity to coach at Albany High School,” Bogucki said. “They have kept me young over the years.”

A graduate of Berlin High School and the College of Santa Fe (N.M.), Bogucki came to Albany in 1986 as a physical education teacher at the former School 16, now Pine Hills Elementary School. She began as the girls’ JV basketball coach that season and took over the varsity job for the 1991-92 season.

Her teams had winning records 11 times, including five of the last six seasons.

Bogucki also coached JV softball at Albany from 1987-94 and varsity volleyball from 1986-92. She served as coach of the Adirondack women’s volleyball team in the Empire State Games from 1988-92, and fulfilled one of her professional goals in 1992 by accepting the opportunity to coach volleyball at the college level at Union.

Bogucki also coached in Cambridge, Berlin and Duanesburg from 1983-86.

Her “career year” came during the 1996-97 season, when a little-known group of players came together to compile a 22-5 record, the best of Bogucki’s career. They went on to win Albany’s first team state championship since the 1929 boys' basketball team topped Buffalo's Fosdick-Masden High School 25-19. Earlier in the 1996-97 school year, Bogucki also led her Union College volleyball team to the state championships and a second-place finish.

Albany’s state championship team included sisters Becky and Carolyn Gottstein, who both went on to play at Boston College. Carolyn Gottstein, a freshman on the 1996-97 team, was named New York state’s top player in 2000 following her senior season.

“That was a phenomenal group of girls,” Bogucki said of the 1996-97 team. “I am grateful for that opportunity. We spend hours and hours in our programs with our kids trying to build and do the best we can as coaches and players, and once in a while you get that very special thing and it turns out to be like that. It was the highlight of my coaching career.”

Though she has spent more than a quarter-century in coaching, Bogucki also has found time to stay involved in another activity with which she has a life-long affinity – theater.

The daughter of operatic singers, she spent two years on the road with her parents from ages 5-7 while they performed in traveling productions of “Camelot” and “The King and I.”

An avid performer in high school and college, Bogucki has directed youth performances every other year at Albany School of Humanities and will continue in that role, as well as rekindling her own performing career.

“I love the involvement, I love to work with people and kids,” she said. “That’s what I’ve done all my life. That’s what I know.”

The City School District of Albany serves approximately 8,400 students in 18 elementary, middle and high schools. In addition to neighborhood schools, the district includes several magnet schools and programs, as well as other innovative academic opportunities for students. The district is more than halfway through its comprehensive facilities project to newly build and/or renovate nearly all of its elementary and middle schools. The ultimate goal of the facilities project is to provide schools with the resources necessary to help students succeed in the 21st century.