Bill Monsen was ‘Nashua through and through’

In the last couple of days, I’ve started this more times than I’d like to admit, only to get a few lines in and scrap everything I’ve got.

I wanted to open with a moment or a memory, one singular experience that best summed up Bill Monsen, but I’ve come to realize, that’s not possible. You can’t do that with someone who has meant as much to as many people as he did.

Son, brother, husband, father, teacher, coach, teammate, friend … Monsen was all those things and probably a whole lot more. One needs to look no further than the scene that unfolded Monday night at Nashua High School South to fully understand that.

A close-to-capacity crowd in the school’s gym celebrated Monsen, who died on Dec. 13 after complications from a heart attack suffered the morning of Thanksgiving, with those closest to him sharing stories. The crowd included students and teachers, coaches and current and former players from both football and lacrosse, and so many more people.

For someone who appeared to enjoy life as much as Monsen, those stories could go on for hours, and when you add in all the experiences he had playing and coaching sports – football and lacrosse – in Nashua, maybe even days.

As an assistant football coach at South, and the head coach for boys lacrosse for 12 years before stepping down last spring, Monsen interacted with hundreds of student athletes who came through each program.

“He was such a likeable person, young and hip and cool,” Trevor Knight said. “Kids viewed him as a players’ coach, but he also demanded the most out of you. He would build a relationship where you didn’t want to let him down. He would build you up, for sure, and tell it to you straight.”

As the son of South football coach Scott Knight, Trevor Knight had an unique experience with Monsen, getting to know him first as a player on his dad’s team. At that time, it was still a unified Nashua team, but before Monsen’s senior year, North opened and he switched schools.

“I remember him playing for Nashua and he was the one guy my dad was mad he couldn’t keep,” Trevor Knight said. “He tore them up a little bit.”

But Monsen came back, eventually joining the South coaching staff and working his way up to offensive coordinator, and mentoring Knight during his time as the starting quarterback for the Panthers. Their relationship changed again this year, as Knight started coaching at South as well.

“He was the one who got me to start coaching,” Knight said. “He put the time in, put the work in, was knowledgeable of the game. He was always making himself better.

“The kids who played football and lacrosse with him, they spent all summer with him, all fall with him, all winter at indoor (lacrosse) with him and all spring with him. South has had a lot of good lacrosse and football players due to him.”

Keith Bertrand would agree, not just on how Monsen could develop players, but how good of a lacrosse coach he was overall.

“He was one of the best coaches in New Hampshire and it’s a tremendous loss to Nashua and New Hampshire,” Bertrand said. “He was destined to coach.”

Both Bertrand and Monsen traveled similar paths, playing lacrosse in the Gate City before eventually coaching Nashua’s boys programs, with Bertrand taking over North a year before Monsen became the head coach at South. Their shared experiences helped them form a friendship off the field.

“We were head coaches at the same time at different schools, but it’s still Nashua,” Bertrand said. “We’d share the struggles of coaching in Nashua. It was bigger than us, that’s what we thought. We made people in Nashua care about lacrosse for the first time in a long time. We weren’t winning championships, but those (North-South) games meant something.”

Bertrand eventually left North to coach at Souhegan until stepping down before the 2022 season. When he made the move to Amherst, he tried to convince Monsen to come with him, but at the time, he didn’t want to leave South.

“Win or lose, it’s still Nashua,” Bertrand said. “He grew up there. He was Nashua through and through.”

Monsen did decide to step down as South’s lacrosse coach last spring, citing the desire to spend more time with his wife, Taylor, and son, Finn, although he stayed on as a football assistant in the fall.

It was already going to be weird this upcoming spring, not seeing Monsen patrol the sideline for South boys lacrosse games, but knowing he won’t be around at all has been tough to process. My relationship with him was vastly different from Knight and Bertrand and everyone else who spoke about him at Monday’s memorial.

Whenever I went to see the Panthers, I looked forward to hearing Monsen’s insights after the game, both what he’d tell me on the record and the stuff he’d say once the interview was officially done. He never shied away from telling me what was on his mind, good or bad, and I appreciated that.

Often times, when someone dies unexpectedly, the immediacy of it makes you feel a sense of regret, and I certainly do, for two reasons.

The first, I’ve felt for some time, as it had as much to do with the COVID-19 pandemic as anything else. A few weeks before the world was turned upside down, Monsen and I met to discuss having South featured on my behind-the-scenes video series “The Season” for the spring of 2020.

I’ve still got the meeting marked in my calendar; it took place on Feb. 24 that year. Within three weeks, the NHIAA had canceled the rest of the winter season, and a few weeks later, the spring season was called off.

Since then, I’ve occasionally thought what an opportunity was missed there. That team, and Monsen, would have been great on camera, and the Panthers would have been pretty good that year. Given what’s happened now, I wish even more that it had been able to take place.

The second regret is tougher to swallow. Following South’s loss to Pinkerton in the playoffs last spring, we talked not just about the game, but briefly about his time as the coach of the Panthers coming to the end. I’d planned to write something separate about that, but had a few followup questions and it slipped my mind.

I figured, I’ll catch up with him during football season, and didn’t. Surely, I’d be able to before the spring, I thought.

What Monsen shared with me that day, I believe, said a lot about the coach he’d become over those dozen years, and I wanted to share them now.

• On his time coaching lacrosse: “I had no idea what I’d be doing in five years. It’s crazy. I was 23. I honestly didn’t know but I’m proud of how far the program has come just to be able to compete with teams. We have a lot of kids playing at the next level, a lot of kids going on to do great things, even if they’re not playing lacrosse. We’ve had some amazing kids over the years.”
• On what the program needed: “It’s going to take someone who is willing to find athletes from other sports and teach them the game. Hopefully they love it the way some of these kids have and they buy in. You can’t do it with just lacrosse kids in Nashua. You’re going to have to find some football kids and some kids who have never tried it but they’re athletic and willing to play.”
• On the North-South rivalry: “We used to have some really good North-South battles when Keith (Bertrand) was there. I’ve missed that the last couple of years. Those were battles. It didn’t matter the record.”
• On what he felt was his biggest moment, last year’s regular-season win over Pinkerton: “The Pinkerton win will stand out. There were people throughout the country who played in Nashua who reached out. It was a big deal.”

A big deal for someone who was a big deal for the Nashua community, on or off the field.

“I was so jealous of the kids that he had in the school now,” Knight said. “I’d go on Facebook and see the GoFundMe page and it had over a hundred shares. There’s people from all sorts of walks of life. He connected with everyone. I don’t know if anyone could say anything bad about him. It’s so huge (of a loss).”