ENFIELD, CT — After 52 years, five state championships and eight Hall of Fame inductions, legendary Enfield High School field hockey coach Cookie Bromage has retired from the program she started in 1967.

In her retirement letter submitted to athletic director Cory O'Connell, Bromage wrote, "My job as field hockey coach has given me the opportunity to work with outstanding student-athletes. I am blessed to have had all of them in my care as their coach. I have made lasting friendships with them and their parents as well. I have been blessed to have the honor to work with Amy [Bartholomew] and Sarah [Pliszka] as my assistant coaches. I know that they will keep our program moving forward and will continue to do a great job." A charter inductee into the Enfield Athletic Hall of Fame in 1996, Bromage, or "Mrs. B" as her players called her, won more high school state titles than any other coach in town history, either at Enfield or Fermi.

Bromage, 76, guided the Raiders to back-to-back Class M championships in 1983 and 1984, then ran off three straight titles from 1992 to 1994, producing an All-American, Erica Johnston, along the way. "E.J. was incredible and had the numbers to back it up," Bromage said of Johnston, who became a two-time All-american at the University of Massachusetts. "Erica was truly a gift to have as a player - always upbeat with her teammates and extremely loyal to me. It is still a joy to watch her play field hockey."

Johnston is one of 18 former players who have been inducted alongside their coach into the Hall of Fame. In addition to Enfield, Bromage is a member of the New Agenda: Northeast Women's Hall of Fame (1998), the Connecticut High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame (1999), the Suffield Athletic Hall of Fame (2003), the Connecticut Field Hockey Hall of Fame (2007) and the National High School Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame (2013). She has been honored by the Enfield hall three times: as an individual, and as coach of the 1992-94 championship teams (1999) and the 1983-84 title-winning squads (2007).

The Connecticut Sports Writers' Alliance honored Bromage and her husband, Bob, at the prestigious Gold Key Dinner in 2015 with the Bo Kolinsky Special Recognition Award. The award, named after the late Bo Kolinsky of the Hartford Courant, was presented in recognition of the couple's combined 100 years of high school coaching, a feat never before accomplished by a husband-wife duo in the state.

Bob Bromage also stepped down this week after 15 years coaching baseball at East Granby High School, following a 38-year run as Enfield skipper, including a Class L state runner-up finish in 2001.

During her tenure at Enfield, Bromage also coached girls' basketball for 17 years, and cheerleading for 10. She is going out on top, having survived a tough stretch in the early part of this decade when the Raiders won just four games in three years. Since merging with former crosstown rival Fermi in 2016, the newly-named Eagles compiled a regular season record of 44-2-2. In that time, Enfield played in the Class L semifinals twice, and made a quarterfinal appearance last fall.