SAUGUS — Whether you were in high school, grade school, or even kindergarten, if you played basketball — if you even looked at a basketball — chances are good you knew Mark Bertrand.
Wednesday, the kids who learned the game at his knee, whether at camps or in high school gyms, came out in droves to pay their respects to Bertrand, who died Friday evening after an accident on his property.
“Coach Bertrand has been in all our lives since we started here in Saugus,” said Susan Valley, director of the Saugus Basketball Travel Program. “He was here not only for the high school, but all the way down to the youth. Starting in kindergarten, first grade, if a kid could bounce a basketball, he wanted them. He was a part of them.
“He’s been such a huge influence on all of these kids, boys and girls.”
Bertrand, 57, was killed when the Bobcat machine he was driving overturned, pinning him underneath. He took over the Saugus boys basketball varsity program in 2018 when Paul Moran stepped down for health reasons.
While they gathered in the freezing cold outside the wake taking place at Bisbee-Porcella Funeral Home, dozens of Saugus students — some former mentees of Bertrand, some not — held red and white balloons and signs bearing sentiments of the coach’s wide-reaching impact.
As he held a poster with the words “A coach’s worth is never found in wins and losses, it’s always found in the impact on players,” Travis Goyetche, 14, explained just how deeply Bertrand’s loss has been felt throughout the basketball community.
“We were looking forward to playing with him,” the Saugus High School freshman said, speaking for the small group of peers around him. “He was always at all our games and coached us, even though he wasn’t actually our coach. He showed up to everything and cheered us on. It meant a lot.”
Ashleigh Moore, 14, said it was amazing to see the vibrant gathering in memory of Bertrand.
“I’ve known him since I was 7 years old. I used to go to the clinics that he had and he would talk to me after my games,” she said. “Everybody loved him.”
Like Goyetche, Moore, now a freshman at Saugus High School, is disappointed she’ll never have the chance to be coached by her longtime family friend.
“It’s a tragedy. It’s really sad,” she said. Her mother, Michelle Moore, said: “With the upcoming season, we were really looking forward to being coached and mentored by him.”
Saugus girls varsity basketball captain Catherine Schena, who grew to know Bertrand well during her years on the high school team, said she was shocked and overwhelmed when she heard the news of his passing.
“I didn’t really know how to feel about it, because one minute it’s like, ‘we’re going to go see him,’ and then the next moment he’s not there,” said Schena, 17. “Their practices were always after ours, so we’d always see him in the gym. You knew who he was, and the kindness that he gave was (unmatched) to anything else.”
Travel team members Ana Beatriz Silva and Paige Hogan, both 14, said the most important lesson they learned from Bertrand was how important it is to keep fighting for their dreams, even when things look bleak.
“Not only was he a great coach, but he always wanted to push the kids to be better on and off the court,” Hogan said. “It’s devastating.”
“Even on his worst days, he would always be positive and tell us we could do it no matter what if we just fought for it. Even after a loss he was positive and would look for the best outcome,” said Silva, also a neighbor of Bertrand. “He would always tell me ‘keep fighting kid. You can do it.’ I wouldn’t be the player I am today if it wasn’t for him.”