Jim Barnes had just retired from his position with an insurance corporation in 2009 during his daughter Erica’s senior season with the Berlin High School girls golf team. After coach Jim Bryers had announced he was going to retire, Barnes approached athletic director Jim Day.

“I told him how much golf had meant to me in teaching and playing the game with Erica and how passionate I was about it,” Barnes said. “I asked, ‘So what would it take for me to be head coach?’ Day said he’d get back to me. I’m forever grateful because he took a big chance on me.”

The major beneficiary has been the BHS team.

During Barnes’ coaching tenure that started in 2010, the Redcoats have won seven Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference state championships – including the last three – and 11 Central Connecticut Conference titles. His record, entering the 2025 season, was 220-27, and the Redcoats had a 48-match winning streak.

He’s quick to credit first, those who put the ball in the hole in a paucity of strokes: his players. When he started coaching, he said “it was a perfect storm for success.” BHS already had won four state titles. “The town and especially the head pro at our home course Timberlin [Golf Club] Marc Bayram have always tremendously supported junior golf,” he said.

Barnes has coached 50 all-conference and 26 All-State players. Six have played Division I college golf and one in Division II. 

Some pillars of Barnes’ coaching philosophy are fun, competition and preparedness. The latter was founded at Riverside Country Club in Trenton, Missouri where he often played as a youth. Sometimes he and some friends would chip and putt on the practice green, illuminated at night by some cars’ headlights.

Barnes, a member of the golf team at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, said his Redcoats really work on and around the greens. “If you have a good short game, you’re in every match,” he said.  

Julia Kemmling, who’s also a 2025 BHS Athletic Hall of Fame inductee, said Barnes “was always in my corner and supportive of everything about the team.”

Barnes is humbled by his HOF honor: “I’m so blessed with my family and career,” he said. “It’s like a chocolate sundae, and this is the cherry on top.”