An ode to Tom Geysen, Franklin's poet girls soccer coach of many decades

A poem awaited every Franklin girls soccer player at their first period class every game day.

Longtime coach Tom Geysen, also an English teacher, wrote a different composition for every opponent. At first they were printed physical copies but eventually morphed to emails over his more than five-decade career leading the Panthers.

He also composed a poem for the team's end-of-season banquet about the end of the season.

"They were never the same," said Franklin athletic trainer Jen Edmonds, who knew Geysen for nearly 20 years. "A lot of the girls have kept them. They have all of the poems he’s ever written."

Geysen passed away Jan. 29 at age 79. He coached at Franklin for 55 years of a career spanning girls soccer, boys track and field, softball, basketball and football. Players from every sport and era regularly stopped by to check in on him, and opponents often asked coaches of other sports how Geysen was doing.

Franklin boys coach Fran Bositis, who has coached the Panthers for more than 50 years himself, first met Geysen when they taught together at what was then the Franklin Junior High.

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"If you meet Tom for the first time, you walk away with the impression that he’s kind of rough. He’s a Charlestown kid. Once you get to know him you start to realize that even though he has this persona about him, he deeply cares for his students and for his athletes. The thing that made him successful was that the kids knew how much he cared for them," Bositis said. "We lost one of the good ones. He was a great guy, a tremendous friend, and he had a huge impact on a lot of people’s lives."

'It was always about his team'

He was elected to the Eastern Mass Girls Soccer Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2013. Geysen won a Division 1 state championship in 2012 and three South sectional titles in the early 2010s.

"He wasn't the type that wanted to have awards or accolades given to him. It was always about his team and the athletes," Edmunds said. "He was a pillar of the community. His impact of his reach was so far. A majority of his most recent athletes are children of people that he had taught in class or coached before."

Jody Klein took over as Franklin's varsity girls soccer coach this past season after Geysen resigned. He hired her as the team's freshmen coach in 2018. She also led the varsity team on an interim basis in 2021 after Geysen broke his femur during the prior spring track season after stepping on a Hydroflask water bottle.

"Tom’s biggest wealth of knowledge for me was his ability to read teenage athletes. There were a couple times just in talking about specific players I’d be specifically talking about the soccer part of what we were talking about, and Tom’s insight was who they were as a person, who they were as a student," Klein said. "He had such a long and distinguished career in education and coaching, his appreciation for his athletes as human beings and of students and of teenagers and knowing adolescent behavior and adolescent development, he excelled in his ability to look at the student athlete as a whole and figure out what they needed."

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Forever an English teacher

He never stopped being an English teacher, though. Geysen often corrected his players' grammar as they were running down the field. The father of the program regularly told "old dad jokes" that went over players' heads.

"He thought he was very funny, though," Klein said. "I would just shake my head."

Edmunds often verbally sparred with Geysen. It was all in good fun between two longtime friends, but the trainer never bested the coach.

"I would never have a good comeback for him. He was always teaching you to be be a better person or teaching all of those life lessons," Edmunds said. "It was far beyond wins and losses or making plays. It was being a good teammate and a friend and setting an example. He loved his family fiercely. We all saw that."

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During the later stretches of his career, Geysen regularly brought a chair or bucket to sit on so he wouldn't stand up and yell so much.

"He tried to control what was coming out of his mouth by doing that. His delivery of a message wasn’t always something that athletes were able to hear in the moment. But I think afterwards they could really appreciate what he was trying to say," Klein said. "He was a very emotional guy. He had his way of getting his message across."

'He challenged people to be better'

His messages on the track boiled down to honesty. Athletes always knew where they stood. If a runner, thrower, et al, wasn't reaching their potential, Geysen told them. He was also quick to praise someone pushing their limits.

"That sticks with people, kids especially," said Franklin track & field coach Nicholas Bailey, who worked with Geysen for 15 years. "They want to know that they're seen, that they're appreciated."

Geysen knew he needed to make practice fun. He joked about pushup form during warmups with his old school whiste.

"Everybody enjoyed coming to practice. Even when he was tough on them, they enjoyed that because they like that side of it," Bailey said. "He challenged people to be better. He praised people when they achieved that."

Bailey started off on uncertain terms with Geysen as a young coach in his 20s finding his way. As they spent more time together, Geysen opened up.

"For somebody that pretended to not like anybody, he was loved by everybody and made people feel like they were loved," Bailey said.

The pillar

He ceded more control of the program to Bailey in recent years. The assistant made more decisions, and Geysen delivered feedback.

"He prepped me for being the head coach of the team," Bailey said. "Making sure everybody on the team feels like they're welcome and what they do matters, giving praise when it's due and making sure people get the best out of the experience that they can."

Both Bailey and Klein want to carry Geysen's ethos in their programs going forward.

"I'm very passionate about Franklin girls soccer. The program is important to me. He is the pillar of this program," Klein said. "I am really hoping to step in and be with this program for a long time and make him proud and continue to build this unbelievable program that he started. The fact that he’s gone and not able to watch it go on without him breaks my heart. I wish he had more time to watch it go on without him."

Contact Kyle Grabowski at kgrabowski@gannett.com. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @kylegrbwsk.

This article originally appeared on MetroWest Daily News: Longtime Franklin coach Tom Geysen remembered after five-decade career