Coaching journey with Navy football has stop on home turf for Northbridge's Jim Kiritsy

Jim Kiritsy hasn’t been able to return home to Northbridge as often as he’d like since he entered the few-days, no-months-off profession that is collegiate coaching 14 years ago.

Since last December, Kiritsy reunited and reconnected with family and friends in Central Mass. around the Christmas holiday and then at the wedding of his brother, Mike, in July.

“I get back when I can, but I’m not home very often,” Kiritsy, 36, said Monday afternoon from Annapolis, Maryland, during a break from his duties as the strength and conditioning coach for the United States Naval Academy football team.

The latest rare opportunity will come beginning Thursday night when Kiritsy and the rest of the Navy contingent arrive in Massachusetts ahead of the Midshipmen’s annual meeting with the rival Black Nights of the U.S. Military Academy.

The 124th tradition-laden showcase showdown between Army and Navy will take place at 3 p.m. Saturday at Gillette Stadium. It’s the first time the game has been played in New England.

“I can’t believe I get to be a part of it,” said Kiritsy, who was hired by Navy 12 months ago, during that Christmas sojourn in the Blackstone Valley.

“I’m honored, but I’m also just so excited. What a dream. And my first time doing it, I get to do it in my home state.”

Starting down the coaching road

Kiritsy was 11 when, following his first youth football practice ‒ the experience was, in a word, amazing ‒ he decided then and there to pursue a career in coaching.

It wasn’t a total surprise as Kiritsy was raised in a “coach’s house,” his stepdad, John Doldoorian, being a Massachusetts Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame inductee.

Well, a coach or a Marine, which led him to Norwich University after graduating from Northbridge High in 2005.

As was the case in high school, Kiritsy captained the football and baseball teams at Norwich, where he served in the Corp of Cadets, which follows a fulltime military-style regimen, and on the Corps Honor Committee while earning a degree in physical education with a concentration in coaching.

“There were only two jobs I ever wanted … and as I went through it, I really decided I wanted to get into coaching,” Kiritsy said.

Upon graduating in 2009, Kiritsy was hired as the assistant strength and conditioning coach at the University of Vermont. It was a field he literally didn’t know existed, but one he has since figuratively run with.

“I said, ‘This is amazing,’ and so it was no-brainer that on my first day of work I knew that this is what I was meant to do,” Kiritsy said. “So that’s where it started.”

After two years at UVM, Kiritsy spent three years as the associate director for strength and conditioning at The Citadel, a military school in Charleston, South Carolina, before landing at Kennesaw State in the Atlanta metro area in 2014.

Finding a special place

Kiritsy was the assistant athletic director for sport performance and the director of football strength and conditioning at Kennesaw, where he settled in and settled down. He and his wife, Bryana, who hails from Northern Vermont, were married in 2017 and have two children, Adeline, 3, and Jack, 1.

Then Navy promoted defensive coordinator Brian Newberry to head coach last December and a week or so later Kiritsy, who previously worked with Newberry at Kennesaw State, landed in Annapolis.

“This is a special place full of special people,” Kiritsy said. “Coach Newberry trusts me and he lets me do my job and he’s given me great resources to go do it. It’s a dream, an absolute dream.”

The attention and energy on the waterfront campus of 4,500 undergraduate students situated east of Washington and south of Baltimore is super focused on one thing each year during the first week of December.

It’s all about Beat Army! Beat Army!

That’s something the Midshipmen did not do last season as they lost a heartbreaker in double overtime in Philadelphia, but have frequently accomplished in the series, which they lead, 62-54-7.

“Everybody in the building who is not associated with football is asking questions and saying good luck because this is the one that everybody cares about,” Kiritsy said.

“Football is important here. At every school there are students that care more or care less, but everybody here wants to beat Army. This is a new experience for me, so it’s only going to build over the course of the week.”

Planning ahead

While Saturday’s game will mark the end of the season as neither Navy nor Army is headed to a bowl game, it won’t be long before Kiritsy and his staff are back working with the players, overseeing a regimen of lifting, stretching and jumping in an effort to prevent injuries. There’s also a big focus on nutrition.

The NCAA limits the time coaches can spend with players during the offseason, but Kiritsy and others in his profession have no such constraints. So he trains them year-round with the frequency depending on the season _ less in the spring and fall, more in the summer and winter _ with everyone taking some time off in May.

“Our job is also to hold these kids accountable,” Kiritsy said after effusively praising the midshipmen, as all Naval Academy students are known. “Teach them lessons that they need to know that will make them better football players, better teammates, and also better students and better men.

“That’s the importance of showing up on time, saying ‘Yes sir, yes ma’am,’ working as hard as you can every single day, being coachable, leading others when it’s your time to lead, and demanding of them things.”

A family atmosphere at Gillette

Demand for tickets to this year’s Army-Navy game was, according to Kraft Group president Jonathan Kraft, higher than ‒ can you believe it? ‒ Taylor Swift’s concerts in May at Gillette Stadium.

The 65,878 fortunate attendees on hand Saturday will be 18 members of Kiritsy’s immediate family, including his mom, Lynne Doldoorian, stepdad and in-laws.

It’s going to be a happy holiday homecoming

“They’re all going to be here for this one,” Kiritsy said. “It’s going to be neat to see everyone.”

—Contact Rich Garven at rgarven@telegram.com. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @RichGarvenTG.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Northbridge's Kiritsy will have cheering section when Navy plays Army