Greg Zopatti, of Pembroke High School, is a 2020 inductee into the Mass. State Track Coaches Association. Having begun his coaching career at Pembroke in the spring of 2005, he founded the program after the school split from Silver Lake Regional High School. As a small school competing in either EMass Division III or Division IV, Pembroke has been one of the best programs in the state, regardless of size, since Coach Z took over. His philosophy has been “small school, big results,” and his athletes have taken on his confident, effervescent personality. Pembroke burst onto the statewide scene in the fall of 2008, when Coach Zopatti’s squad won the first of six straight EMass divisional titles. A year later, the Titans began a five-year run of dominance at the DII All State XC Championship, winning four out of five titles, with the exception being an epic 2-point loss to Bishop Feehan in 2011. Coach Z, unphased, led the Titans to back to back runner-up finishes at the Nike Cross Regionals Northeast Championship, and back to back trips to Nike Cross Nationals in Portland, Oregon, a feat never duplicated by any Massachusetts team. Working alongside Coach Jocko Rooney, Coach Zopatti has also overseen a dominant stretch for the Titans on the track. Between 2011-2015, the Titans girls indoor track squad won three DIII state titles, while the boys took two of their own. Outdoors, the girls took back to back EMass DIV titles in 2008-09, and the boys joined them with titles in 2009, and a three-peat from 2013-2015. All totaled, Pembroke has amassed 11 state divisional titles in indoor and outdoor track since 2008, dozens of individual and relay state titles, and several All-American honors, making it the most storied program in Massachusetts during that period, despite having just about 800 students in the school. Coach Zopatti has had the fortune of studying under some of the most legendary coaches in the area. MSTCA Hall of Famer Ed Meehan coached Greg as a freshman at Weymouth High School on the 1995 Indoor Track State Championship team, and led Greg’s outdoor 4x800 squad, which set a then state record of 7:53.86 in 1998, with Zopatti on the anchor. Zopatti, the individual 800 meter champion at the previous week’s EMass DI meet, elected to forego his individual race at All States, helping his squad to the win and the record, which stood for over a decade. Greg took his talents to UMass-Amherst, where he ran for the legendary Ken O’Brien, an experience that was instrumental in his becoming a coach. Greg is a loving husband to his beautiful wife Adrienne, and the adoring father of his three children, twins Martin and Genevieve, age 6, and William, age 4. He is also the owner and Director of Running for the Berkshire Running Camp, which he co-founded in 2013. He is a science teacher at Pembroke Community Middle School, is passionate about music, and leadership. He believes in making young people “better runners, better teammates, and better people,” and he practices that philosophy every day.
Class: 2021 Inducted: 2021