Kevin Saint Clair, a cycling and rowing stalwart and Masterman ‘GOAT,’ died after being hit while riding his bike

Kevin Saint Clair was good at a lot of things: He was a five-time member of the U.S. National Rowing Team and a coach who inspired athletes, both in rowing and running. He was an avid cyclist who competed in dozens of races a year and biked his way around Philadelphia in all kinds of weather.

But it was perhaps as an educator that he made his widest impact: Saint Clair was a beloved teacher, coach and dean at the Julia R. Masterman school, where for decades he inspired students not just with lessons about math, but real-world examples of how to push yourself harder than you thought you could, about what community means and how to build it.

Saint Clair was killed Monday after a car struck him while he rode his bicycle from his son’s house in Roxborough to his own home in Chestnut Hill, turning from Wises Mill Road onto Henry Avenue just before 7 p.m. The impact of the initial crash pushed Saint Clair into a northbound lane, where he was struck by another car. He was taken to Einstein Medical Center, where he died from his injuries. He was 65.

Police said the accident investigation is ongoing.

Word of his death rippled through Masterman and the Philadelphia cycling and rowing communities, where Saint Clair was a vibrant, vital center.

Tributes have poured in on social media — “he was more a father than a teacher,” and “he made me feel like I mattered” and “my life is completely changed for his kindness and complete dedication to his students & athletes.”

Nicole McGeary was Saint Clair’s colleague, sixth-grade partner teacher, and friend for 24 years, through his years on the Masterman faculty and, after his recent retirement, when he remained part of the school as a substitute teacher.

“He was a great teacher, but when he became dean, it was amazing to see what he could do,” she said. “He organized everything — fun day on the roof, dodge ball at the end of the year. Nobody wants to do that with 200 sixth graders, but he did it,” said McGeary.

To generations of Masterman students, Saint Clair was a standout presence.

“He would tell you what you needed to hear, even if it wasn’t easy to hear,” said Jacob Winterstein, who attended Masterman in the early 2000s. “It was always underpinned with honesty, integrity and a lot of love.”

Saint Clair was Masterman’s cross-country coach, and in 2004, Winterstein was its captain, one of a legion of athletes who can still hear Saint Clair in their head saying “attack the hill!” It always struck Winterstein that while many coaches might stand on the sidelines blowing a whistle, Saint Clair was sweating next to them.

“When you get to the top of the hill, your body understandably is telling you to rest. He would teach us that when you get to the top of the hill, that’s when you try to run even faster. You push beyond what you think is a limit. When I’m parenting and I think I’m tired, I’ve actually taken my body to its limits, I know that there’s more left. I’m grateful that he imparted those lessons to us,” Winterstein said.

When Winterstein’s mother, former Masterman principal Marge Neff, left retirement briefly to become Masterman’s interim principal in 2021, she brought Saint Clair back, too. It was a difficult time for the school, bridging a principal transition, and coping with a pandemic and asbestos in the building, but Saint Clair made things lighter — not just because of his administrative skills, but because of who he was.

“You could always count on Kevin to do the right thing and do what needed to be done, but his wit was wonderful — never mean-spirited, but it kept people engaged,” Neff said.

The thing that stood out most about Saint Clair was his moral compass, said Jessica Brown, another former Masterman principal.

“When students got in trouble and were sent to him, he spent large amounts of time having conversations about the importance of honesty and being kind to others,” Brown said. “He also let them know that making mistakes was ok, you just had to be honest about what happened.”

Saint Clair was a mensch, Brown said, the staffer who you’d find wiping down tables in the lunchroom, throwing ice cream parties to honor students, waiting until dark for a late parent to pick up a student and never complaining.

Chris Kuncio, another former Masterman student and athlete, called Saint Clair “one of the Masterman GOATs,” someone who Kuncio finds himself emulating now as a teacher in Philadelphia himself — a balance of goofy and kind, tough and understanding.

“I was 12, 13 years old and there was this ironman coming into the classroom every day, the epitome of cool,” Kuncio said. “

Saint Clair loomed just as large in other circles, as a longtime Vesper Boat Club member who had under his belt multiple national rowing championships in sweep and sculling events. He was also an avid cyclist who filled his weekends with rides and races — Saint Clair would alternate between his road bike and mountain bike and also loved cyclocross, where riders race around a course of varied terrains, then carry their bike around obstructions and hop back on it to resume riding.

Jeff Appeltans raced with and against Saint Clair for 30 years, up until this past weekend.

“He was very competitive, when you’re in the heat of the moment, he’s not giving you an inch,” said Appletans. “But when you’re off the bike, it’s a completely different story.”

As busy as Saint Clair stayed, there was no question that his family was at the heart of his life — his wife, Ellen, sons Jack and Wyatt, and grandsons Maximilian and Fulton.

When Saint Clair died, he was biking home from a son’s house, where he had sanded and edged floors, combining his love of helping others with another passion, as a handyman who delighted in breathing new life into old homes, as he did to his family’s house in Chestnut Hill.

One of 12 children born to Jean and Jack Saint Clair and raised in East Oak Lane, Saint Clair at first steered away from teaching, he told a Masterman student journalist.

His father was a longtime teacher and track coach, first at Cardinal Dougherty High and then at Temple University; one brother became a teacher, too. Eventually, Saint Clair decided that he wasn’t meant to be an accountant after all; he was built for teaching.

“I hate being a cliche, but when you love what you do, you’ve never worked a day in your life, it’s true,” Saint Clair told the Masterman student publication.

He is survived by his wife, sons, and grandsons, as well as 10 of his siblings and a host of nieces and nephews.

A visitation is scheduled for Friday, 6 to 8 p.m. at Our Mother of Consolation, 9 E. Chestnut Hill Ave., Philadelphia, where Saint Clair was a parishioner and member of the church choir, and Saturday, beginning at 9 a.m. A funeral Mass will be said at the church at 11 a.m.

Memorial donations may be made to Our Mother of Consolation, the Vesper Club, or the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia.