A perfect day for Clarence Bruess is out on the water, when the temperature hits 70 degrees and the walleye are biting. After coaching and being a part of Monroe athletics for most of his career, he's happy to enjoy family, friends and fishing after a lifetime of giving back and making an impact on students and athletes.

Bruess, known to many as C.J., made a name for himself coaching a sport he didn't expect. Even after several years of retirement under his belt, he remains a goal-oriented competitor at heart.

He was born in St. Lucas, Iowa, a German-Catholic farming community of about 100 people. He was the youngest of 11 children, and his family farmed about 120 acres and raised all different animals. Bruess was expected to work a lot and remembers milking and picking corn by hand, doing lots of chores and catching snapping turtles in the creek.

His uncle, Ed, a bachelor who sold insurance, was a huge sports fan and encouraged the children to participate and do well. Basketball and baseball were the only sports offered at St. Luke's High School, where Bruess graduated in 1959, and he loved both.

"The farm life was good for me," Bruess said. "But I knew I wasn't going to be a farmer."

The day after graduation, Bruess began a job building silos. It was brutal work but it paid his way through college - he attended Loras College in Dubuque. He was the first in his family to go past high school; the reason he went was because his monsignor from high school thought it was a good idea. He didn't really have a plan, but he was excited to go.

He said attending Loras was a fabulous experience. One of the best things about the school was its intramural program: Bruess said that each day after class, there were games that gave him the opportunity to compete.

He always loved books and developed a strong interest in English after having great professors. Bruess was a voracious reader, and the experience for him in college of how literature truly worked was one of the best things to happen to him, he said.

He graduated after four years and started his masters program just after his marriage June 13, 1964 to Mary Lou. Soon after the wedding, the couple drove to Washington, D.C., where he attended summer school and took on a heavy load of English classes. Luckily Loras then started their own masters program, and Bruess finished up there.

He landed his first job as a teacher in Highland, where he stayed for three years, teaching high school English and coaching.

The year he began, he noticed athletic students on the sidelines watching football practice. He asked them why they weren't playing and they told him that they were basketball players. When he introduced himself as their new head basketball coach, he decided to recruit them and start Highland's first cross country team the first week of school. The principal told him there was no money for the program - so Bruess found an old box of jerseys, filled his station wagon with kids and recruited 22 students in the first week.

The team used a nearby park because there was no golf course to run. They had a successful season and grew the program from there. Eventually, Bruess started a volleyball team at Highland too and helped with the long-distance runners on the track team.

Bruess enjoyed the athletic town and his students. But he also knew that eventually he would look for a career move to a bigger school. He had heard of Monroe and knew it had a strong athletics program. Bruess recalled seeing the Cheesemakers in the news often and he came here thinking that he would eventually coach basketball.

"Monroe is a family town and we had a family," Bruess said. "I came here at a great time."

They moved to Monroe in 1966. Bruess assisted coaching basketball alongside the famous Lee Mitchell starting in the 1967-68 season and did so until Mitchell retired, but Bruess had already fallen in love with the sport of cross country. And that's where his heart stayed.

"I didn't think I had the makings of being a very good basketball coach," Bruess said.

He gave up basketball eventually and focused solely on cross country, and he also assisted in track and coached baseball for a bit too.

When Bruess was first named the head cross country coach, he was the fifth coach in five years for the team. The team had seven athletes out for the sport, and so began the saying from the heart of Bruess, who promised to take them "to the mountain top" - which is just what he did.

Two years later the program had more than 20 students and won the Badger Conference championship with Bruess at the helm. The team went to state in cross country several times and saw great success individually as well as a team. In 1996, Bruess was inducted into the Wisconsin Cross Country Coaches Hall of Fame. Today, there is still an annual Bruess Invitational Cross Country Meet honoring the coach.

Bruess said there were so many talented students in Monroe looking for a chance to advance that it was easy to bring out their talent. Some would decide to go out for cross country simply because they liked how Bruess taught. More athletes came when the team saw more and more success.

To win conference was a phenomenal thing, Bruess said. The sport quickly developed a following and people started to understand and appreciate cross country in Monroe.

"I really believe it's the greatest sport in the world," he said. "They were willing to work and we refined the system."

Bruess recalls days when the team would ask for more challenges and then compete with each other. The bonds created and the inspiration to work hard was prominent.

Bruess isn't a runner himself and although he would jog alongside his athletes at times, he was there as a coach and mentor. Today, he has several photos, signed by several of his runners, each telling him the impact he made on their lives. Many quote their coach directly, and reminisce about how his words still stick with them years later.

"The mind told the body to do impossible things and the body obeyed," he said. It's one of his favorite sayings and one that he passed along often to his runners.

Teaching English was also something that Bruess truly loved, and he never looked to move from that.

"My life teaching wasn't work," he said. "It was fun. It was play."

Bruess also served as the Key Club advisor, an extension of Kiwanis, and he was an honorary Kiwanian. He enjoyed taking several students to the district convention and felt surrounded by students who wanted to work and compete. He said it was a very rewarding part of his job.

In 1980, he traded in his Key Club Advisor title for Monroe's athletic director. The job had opened in the middle of the summer and Bruess took on the big load - and loved it. Often he would come home from cross country practice for dinner and then head back to the office to plan for the next day. Fellow coaches became Bruess' best friends and he felt a bond with the staff - he served as the athletic director and cross country and track coach until his retirement in 1996.

At age 55, Bruess said, he was ready to retire. He battled with health issues but always came out on top. He wanted to enjoy life with his wife and family, and at 74, that's exactly what he's still doing.

Bruess raised four children in Monroe, coached and taught some of them, and he said that life as a coach, teacher and athletic director was great for everyone. His own children have been met with success, and he recalls his wife driving a mini-bus with the team and their own children.

He also taught St. Victor's night school, served as an Optimist and Jaycee, and served on St. Victor's Parish Council and CYO Baseball. He even ran a small construction company during the summers with other teacher friends for a few years, he recalls.

Bruess is still an avid reader, sometimes finishing a book a day. He gave up hunting in recent years but still enjoys fishing whenever he can. He and his wife enjoy traveling and they have a small place up north that the entire family enjoys.