LISA PAPARONE

“Coach Pap” is a former Division 1 Athlete from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She started coaching over 20 years ago in NC where she had consecutive State Champions in the 4x2 and 4x1, who also went on to become National Champions in their respective years.

Aside from working with numerous All-Americans over the years, she has coached multiple State Champions in both NC and NY.

Most recently, she has coached 2x Federation Champion Long Jumper Bashir Praileau, who is also a 2x State runner up in the 55 and 110 hurdles, as well as his team mate Zhi Luncheon-Lowrie, who won the Division 1 State High Jump. She has also coached 4x Long and Triple jump state champion, Capital Region Hall of Famer, Leah Moran, who most recently competed in the 2021 Olympic.Trials. Her Colonie boys 4x100 relay in 2019 were State and Federation Champions and set the All-Time Best Section II time of 41.39 in that relay. Kelly Moran, younger sister to Leah, in 2022 became the Division 2 Triple Jump State Champion as well.

For the past decade, Coach Pap has teamed with Coach Jason Willis in coaching many of our local bests. If one were to look at the top of the local and state leaderboards, as well as the Section 2 All Time Lists, athletes of Coach Pap’s hold quite a large residence across the sprints, hurdles, relays and horizontal jumps categories. Currently, Coach Pap is the Boys Head Coach at Colonie as well as head coach of a local AAU and USATF team- Sky’s the Limit TC.

Her greatest accomplishment though, is not the numbers you see on the boards, but more importantly, the numbers of student athletes who have gone on to college or careers and become positive, successful members of their communities.