Golf, Teaching Legend Wagner Named To Rockville High School Hall

VERNON, CT — The late Theodore C. "Ted" Wagner, who led Rockville High School to four conference golf championships in a 26-year coaching career from 1969-1994, is the seventh announced 2021 inductee into the RHS Athletic Hall of Fame.

Committee chairman Scott Smith made the announcement Friday.

Wagner, the winningest and longest-serving golf coach in school history, mentored 35 all-conference selections and produced three All-State honorees in 2017 RHS Hall of Fame inductee Doug Domian in 1981, David French in 1985 and Gary Rencurrel in 1987.

Competing in the CCC East under Wagner from 1985-1994, the Rams amassed a 96-49-1 overall record and won conference championships in 1985, ’90, ’93. The Rams captured their first conference championship under Wagner in 1981, winning the CVC crown.

As a teacher, Wagner's passion for sports and the game of golf was extremely evident. He often related algebraic equations and word problems to golf scenarios and frequently used a golf club or two as a teaching aid in the classroom. After school, he began working with the students who had joined the golf club, helping to develop their skills so they might one-day be able to play on the golf team at RHS — a team that he was asked to become head coach of in 1969 by Dick Tingley, a 2016 RHS Hall of Fame inductee.

Wagner immediately began rebuilding the high school program that was low in numbers by encouraging many of the young players he worked with at the junior high club level to join the team. Whether it was by tweaking their swings for more consistency, helping them learn ways to focus in pressure situations or just by knowing what to say to keep things positive, Wagner had a knack for making his players better.

After a few years of piecing together a deeper roster with more talented players, Wagner's 1974 team finished third in the CVC with a 9-5-4 record, 12-5-4 overall. The accomplishment earned the the golf program the Team-of-the-Year Award for the spring season and placed Rockville golf as one of the most consistent programs in the highly competitive CVC.

Heading into the 1980 season, the Rams featured a deep, talented roster, which included Domian, a sophomore. Domian went on to earn All-CVC honors three times as the team’s No. 1 player, win the CVC individual championship and play a major role in the Rams winning their 1981 CVC title.

As a member of the newly-formed CCC East in 1985, Rockville began and remained as the dominant program on the links, winning its second league title with a team that featured senior All-Stater French, and Rencurrel, a sophomore.

Following triple-bypass surgery in May of 1990, Wagner retired from his teaching career and, four years later, as golf coach at the end of the 1994 season. In 1995 the Connecticut High School Coaches Association named Wagner the Outstanding Golf Coach-of-the-Year for his career accomplishments.

Throughout his career and into retirement, Ted was a well-known USGA teaching professional, providing lessons and clinics at local driving ranges for many years, and also worked as a course ranger at Twin Hills Country Club in Coventry, and as a Zamboni driver at Bolton Ice Palace.

Wagner spent 34 years as a teacher in the Vernon school system — first at Northeast School and then as a mathematics teacher at Sykes Junior High and finally Vernon Center Middle School.

Wagner died unexpectedly on Feb. 14, 2003.

An Army veteran and long-time resident of Manchester, Wagner played basketball and baseball at both RHS and Willimantic State Teachers College, Now Eastern Connecticut State University (Class of 1956) under hall of fame coach Francis E. Geissler. He was married to the late Jacqueline (Carpenter) Wagner and is survived by son Kurt Wagner and two daughters, Robin Ohrt and Tracy Chartier.