By: Darren Cooper – Record Sports Columnist

BOGOTA – A garbage truck rolls by Feigel Field Monday in Bogota. The young man on the back of the truck looks up from his duties and waves.

“One of my kids,” said Jay Mahoney, sitting peacefully, after acknowledging the greeting.

It wasn’t one of Mahoney’s real kids, just one of the hundreds, well, thousands he coached or knew at Bogota High School. For close to 43 years, Mahoney elevated, cajoled, fought, begged and pleaded on the Bucs’ basketball sidelines.

He was The Fire in Bergen County. His raw passion got him in trouble more than once (and he regrets a lot of things) but there was no denying his noble intentions.

There was no one like him, before or since.

He won 702 games, second most of any Bergen County boys basketball coach. You want to talk about coaching trees? Mahoney is the pillar of one of the biggest in Bergen County with coaches in multiple sports connected directly to him.

Then, just like that, it was all over. A few weeks before the end of the regular season ended in 2022, Mahoney retired from the Bogota basketball job because of overwhelming anxiety.

It seemed like an odd thing to say. Anxiety? For a coach who had accomplished so much and meant so much to his community? But it was real. A coach with so much fire needed to cool down.

Since then, Mahoney has sought treatment. It hasn’t been easy to find the balance. The Fire still burns.

“I am struggling with anxiety still,” Mahoney said while watching Bogota cross-country practice. “It’s a constant battle. I now know many people who have it and it seems like it’s a lifetime thing.”

For Mahoney, the symptoms manifest themselves sometimes as a pain in the pit of his stomach, or potentially a headache. He gets flustered. During our conversation, he paused a bunch of times searching for exactly the right words.

“I am doing OK, but I would be lying if I didn’t say that every day is… .a chore… yeah, yeah,” Mahoney said. “Yeah.”

Yet now, maybe more than ever, Mahoney is an ideal resource for young athletes, really young people in general, to talk about their own struggles with anxiety and depression. He can relate.

“We have had student-athletes who have battled different mental health issues and he is very open about it and the kids know that and they know they can talk to him about it,” Bogota cross-country coach Pat Rochford said. “It’s like an open environment and I think the kids feel safe that they can go to him and get his advice too. Him being so open is helpful.”

“I don’t hide things,” Mahoney said.

Any conversation with Mahoney turns to basketball and some of the incidents that made headlines. Looking back, does he have regrets? Yes. The first thing he says is just being a jerk – his word was a lot stronger – to other people in the school building.

Moments on the court when he acted out, he would always find the time to apologize to the player who may have been aggrieved. They understood. Kids always understand, they know their coach may not be perfect and sports are emotional.

Last winter, Mahoney worked as a volunteer girls assistant at Secaucus for his friend John Sterling. The Patriots won the North 2, Group 2 title. Mahoney was thrilled to do his part, even if that meant sitting at the end of the bench and the girls not really knowing who he was.

“I miss tremendously the interaction with the kids,” Mahoney said. “I miss the open gyms, because that’s when kids would come down, alumni would always come. We would let anyone in. I miss coming out of school and seeing guys yell ‘hey coach’ or just driving by, that I miss.”

Mahoney was the Bogota cross-country coach before Rochford, and he coached Rochford. With the Bucs, Mahoney is content to be a resource. He may not volunteer his advice, but he’s ready to be asked.

“I think he is enjoying this role as a being a retired coach,” Rochford said with a smile. “There were times and situations last year, we won our first sectional title since 1998 and we had a lot of things going on, but I could shoot him a text and get his feedback to make sure I was navigating certain situations correctly.”

Mahoney likes to sleep late unless there is cross-country practice to attend. He still watches plenty of basketball. His phone buzzes with messages from former players. He’s a grandfather for the first time and he smiles broadly when talking about that.

What do you when the fire inside you is battling a feeling that you can’t really describe?

You sit back and let the world come to you, sharing your strengths and your flaws when asked, providing an example for another generation to learn.