Leonard Malech – 1962
May 5, 2026 2026-09-23 0:23
Leonard Malech ’62
For nearly three decades, from 1971 to 2000, one name was stitched into the fabric of Brooklyn Technical High School track and field: Lenny Malech.
Lenny Malech ‘62, was a sprinter running on the team under Coach Weis. In the late Winter of Lenny’s senior year, Coach Weis became ill and his temporary replacement was the newest member of the Phys Ed. Dept; Edwin Zarowin. In 1971 Zarowin was in need of an assistant coach. He asked a former Tech runner, Steve Sutton ‘66, if he knew anyone. Steve said, ‘I know a guy…’ A few weeks later, Lenny began his career as an assistant on the boys’ team, coaching freshmen and jumpers.
But it was in 1974 that his path changed the course of Brooklyn Tech track history. When a determined group of girls set out to build a track program from nothing, Malech stepped in as their coach. What followed was one of the most dominant runs in New York City scholastic sports history: sixteen consecutive PSAL City Championships, and seventeen out of nineteen overall, four consecutive Triple Crowns.
Several of those seasons the Engineers were recognized as the highest-scoring high school at the New York State Championships — not just city champions, but among the best in the state.
Malech’s gift was not only building winners. It was building believers. He took what one former athlete remembered as “a gaggle of teenage girls” with no resources, no track, and no roadmap, and turned them into a program that found an event — and a purpose — for every single one of them.
In 1981, the PSAL named him Commissioner of Girls Cross Country, Indoor, and Outdoor Track & Field — the first male commissioner of a girls’ sport program in PSAL history, a milestone as significant off the track as anything his teams accomplished on it.
His athletes ran their way into the record books. In 1980, a Brooklyn Tech relay team ran 3:54.0 for the 4×400 at the Millrose Games — the fastest time ever recorded on a 160-yard track. A year earlier, his 4×800 relay squad set a national indoor record of 9:52 at the Johnson & Wales Christmas Relays — a mark his own athletes would go on to break four times over the following two years, eventually driving it down to roughly 9:15. At the Penn Relays, his relay teams podiumed year after year: second in 1978, second again in 1979, and first in 1980, crossing the line in 9:03.69.
In 1984, after a period away, Malech returned to Brooklyn Tech — this time as head coach of the boys’ team, a role he would hold for sixteen more years. The championships kept coming: nine more PSAL City titles, including the rare Triple Crown of 1989–90. His indoor 4×800 relay won a national championship in 1996, after finishing second in 1990 and 1995. His outdoor 4×800 team ranked second in the entire country according to Track & Field News in both 1989 and 1990. In 1986, his 4×200 relay team went undefeated across City, State, and Eastern States championships, while his 4×100 relay set a New York State record of 41.85 that same year.
When Coach Malech retired on July 1, 2000, he left the sport having won 26 PSAL Team Championship titles across the boys’ and girls’ programs combined — a total that made him the winningest coach in Tech track history and the second-winningest coach in the history of PSAL.
But the number that may matter most is not on any record board. It is the generation of Brooklyn Tech girls who got to discover for the first time what it meant to compete, to belong, and to win — together, with the same dedicated coach in their corner, one championship season after another.
