There are all the professional traits that Hall of Fame coach Doug Sharples carried during the course of 537 career victories and eight state championships. Precision. Competitiveness. At times, he was a touch on the stern side.

And there was the Doug Sharples that his former athletes, now adults, kept in touch with years later to share news of their families, to sit with over a meal.

“He kind of had this on-the-outside, serious, he-means-business kind of attitude,” said 2005 East Lyme High School graduate Irv Steel, who ran cross country for Sharples. “At the same time, he just cared so deeply about every single athlete.

“His wife (Helene), she would have us over. We called her ‘Mrs. Coach.’ She was just unbelievable, an Italian cook. She would have us over for pasta dinners before races. We would go on long runs when they lived in Groton Long Point and they would get us doughnuts and juice for afterwards.

“They just became an extended family.”

Sharples, who coached the St. Bernard School boys’ cross country team for 34 seasons, finishing his career with six more years at East Lyme, died last week at the age of 82.

He was inducted into the National High School Athletic Coaches’ Association Hall of Fame in 2013, the Connecticut High School Coaches’ Association Hall of Fame in 2000 and the St. Bernard Hall of Fame in 2006.

He was the NHSACA Coach of the Year in 1986. In 1981, Runners World named Sharples as one of the top 10 high school cross country coaches in America, with the Saints having won back-to-back State Open titles in 1968-69.

Sharples, a Mystic resident, also started the school’s track program in 1968, coaching track for 11 years, as well.

“Doug was an excellent coach, a great attention to detail,” former St. Bernard coach and athletic director Art Lamoureux said this week. “I coached shot put, discus and javelin for him and he would say, ‘Art, I hate to do this to you, but I need 28 points from you today or 24 points from you today.’ I would say, ‘Doug, don’t you think that’s unreasonable?’

“I would say, ‘What’s the score of the meet going to be?’ He would say, ‘It’s going to be this.’ In the seven years I coached track, I don’t remember one score he was off on. He was exact. ... He was a for-real coach.”

Sharples coached the East Lyme boys’ cross country team to a third-place finish at the New England championship meet in 2004, the best team finish in program history until the Vikings finished second Saturday at Wickham Park in Manchester.

Former Griswold cross country coach Gerry Chester, who is back working with the Wolverines, was at Wickham Park when news of Sharples’ death spread. Sharples gave Chester his first job as an assistant coach in 1974 and was later the best man at Chester’s wedding.

“He’s a legend,” Chester said. “When I got into coaching, there were people like (Bob) Haddad, (Lindy) Remigino, Doug, Irv Black. They were the ground floor. I was so lucky I went into coaching when they were around. It was the best era of coaching.

“They all wanted to win but they all wanted to make the sport better. Just standing around listening to those guys, I was like, ‘Holy crap.’ They were all terrific human beings. ... I babysat for Doug’s kids. He was the best man at my wedding. I’ve spent the last two days with one memory after the other. He touched not just my life, he touched so many lives.”

Chester was a student at Norwich Free Academy and Sharples lived down the street from him — “That was our rival. But he likes the sport I love. We got to talking back and forth all the time,” Chester said.

Not everyone at NFA, as it turns out, was thrilled with Chester consorting with “the enemy.”

“I was accused of telling all the secrets,” Chester said with a chuckle. “Are you crazy? ... We played off that really well. That actually solidified our friendship. Since that happened, we probably laughed and talked about that 25 times.”

Sharples, a 1960 NFA graduate and a 1964 graduate of Georgetown College in Kentucky, was the dean of students at St. Bernard and taught science at the school from 1967-2001.

He served on the St. Bernard Athletic Hall of Fame committee with Lamoureux, attending the most recent meeting. And this fall, he invited Steel to join him in watching the East Lyme cross country team’s meet against NFA at Rocky Neck State Park.

Sharples was a father and grandfather, prone to handing out life lessons to those around him.

“He wasn’t hard to figure out, but he was complex,” Chester said. “He taught me more about being humble in public and how to win with class and lose with a little dignity.”

“His teaching went beyond the cross country course,” Steel said. “He instilled self-discipline, hammered that down with all of us ... to have a passion for the sport, for work and college and all of that. He had super-high expectations for himself and all of us. Just an amazing coach. He had so much wisdom and knowledge from all his different experiences.”

Said Lamoureux: “He’s going to be missed on a lot of levels.”

v.fulkerson@theday.com