Fame, fortune, power or just reaching a goal are a few examples of what can motivate a person to continue doing something for years on end.

There is one thing, though, that may outlast the rest, that never wears off through the good, bad and toughest times — passion.

Sedona Red Rock High School head track and field coach Harry Schneider’s passion for the sport has led him to reach this, his 50th season coaching high school outdoor track and field. Between winter track and field, spring track and field and cross-country, Schneider has a total of 120 seasons of coaching under his belt.

“It didn’t enter my mind. I knew I’d coach for a long time, but you don’t think of 50 years. What kid at 21 years old is thinking when you’re 72 you’re still going to be coaching? Come on,” Schneider said.

Without a doubt, Schneider knows what winning feels like. Throughout his coaching career, Schneider has coached numerous championship teams at various levels from league to county to state, including a state championship cross-country team in New York in 1995. He has brought home two state titles with the Scorpions during the last decade.

Thirty-two years of his career he spent coaching in New York, the first two at New Field High School and the remaining 30 at Centereach High School.

At Centereach, he won 158 consecutive high school league meets, spanning 27 years, from 1972 to 1998. After losing once, because, he said, he did not want to risk injuring one of his top runners, he was a part of 15 more titles, finishing with a 173-1 overall record.

Winning is always nice, but that is not what it is about.

Schneider does not want to only develop standout runners, throwers, jumpers and vaulters, he wants to nurture their own passion for the sport.

He has had success doing that, too — 69 athletes he has coached went on to coach, he said, and there could be more. Volunteers regularly help at Red Rock’s three home meets each season, and high-level runners train at the school and will talk with current Scorpions athletes.

“I would say that’s my proudest thing. It’s not the 26 and a half years of undefeated. It’s not the state championships, although they’re wonderful,” said Schneider, who added that he continues to go to the U.S. Olympic trials.

A native of Long Island in New York, Schneider got his start in the sport in junior high school. He also played football, and his coach Joe Scanella, who went on to coach for the Oakland Raiders and the Canadian Football League’s Montreal Alouettes, and assistant coach Bob Pratt got him interested in track and field despite that neither knew anything about the sport.

“I just loved the sport. The responsibility [of] doing good and bad is up to me,” Schneider said. “It’s not a putdown to them because I love the guys, they didn’t know the sport …. I just got excited about the sport in junior high and in high school.”

He mainly competed in the javelin at Springfield College, from which he graduated in 1967. He was a captain his senior season, and competed at the masters level for Long Island Athletic Club for a handful of years. Coincidentally, javelin became a sanctioned field event in the Arizona Interscholastic Association just this year.

After college, Schneider became a physical education teacher. Schneider coached cross-country alone, and teamed with a man named Bob Burkley for track and field.

Both Schneider and Burkley will be inducted into the Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame in May.

Then some three decades later, Schneider and his wife, Christine, visited Sedona and immediately fell in love with it. They moved to red rock country, and Harry Schneider intended on being just an assistant to then-head coach Mary Beattie, where he could focus on just a couple of events rather than an entire team.

That was at the start of the millennium, and soon after a pregnant Beattie could no longer be the head coach. Schneider found himself as the top dog once again, and 18 years later still remains. He has no intention of going anywhere, at least as long as one thing holds true.

“When the kids stop reacting to what we do [I’ll retire],” Schneider said. “If they become selfish or say, ‘Hey this old guy doesn’t know what to do’ …. I don’t have plans of retiring yet, [but] my wife thinks I should.”

Those around him still see that fervor to this day. Lew Hoyt has been coaching with Schneider for about 10 years. Hoyt, a high jump alternate for the U.S. for the 1964 and 1968 Olympic Games, echoed that sentiment.

“I’ve been around USC national champion coaches, I’ve been around the best of everybody, and Coach is the best track and field coach I’ve ever seen,” Hoyt said. “He has a passion for it, and he teaches not just how to hurdle, how to jump, how to sprint — he teaches life values: Being on time, saying thank you, responsibility.”

Of course to be successful, there is hard work involved. Schneider’s standards have not wavered with the passing of the years.

“The whole concept of it is dedication to the sport, because you’ve got to go out and practice every single day, and you can’t slack off at all because he doesn’t want that,” Red Rock senior Nathan Hoyer said. “He has a lot of experience and he brings that here and wants us to see that we have potential in ourselves, so that’s what makes him a good coach.”

During the mid- to late afternoons for about two months every spring, one can find Schneider, wearing his iconic black hat, at the Red Rock track.

“I look forward to practice every day,” Schneider said. “I used to tell people, I could have a lousy day teaching, one of those days. Three o’clock [is] just happy, enjoyable time.”

To this day, Schneider’s passion continues bringing him back for more, and it appears he will not be stopping anytime soon.