Barry, a young, energetic graduate of Iona College and native New Yorker, was handed the keys to the CM cross-country team by then-headmaster Brother Joseph G. McKenna with a blunt exchange of words.

McKenna simply said, “Jim, you’re in charge of track.’’

Barry would pour his heart, soul, and a large portion of his wallet into the position. And, as it turned out, he was perfect for the job.

Today at historic Franklin Park in Jamaica Plain, many of Massachusetts’s best high school cross-country runners will converge for the 50th annual running of Brother Jim Barry’s brainchild, the Catholic Memorial Invitational, a 3.1-mile test of wills that weaves through the flats and hills of Frederick Law Olmsted’s famed 19th-century landscape.

Now helmed by CM cross-country coach Vin Catano, the CMI has become a race known for its efficiency and its longstanding tradition as one of the only invitational races in New England sponsored by a high school.

The race wasn’t always seamless, but Barry’s love of teaching and his passion for running turned the CMI into what it is today, a staple of Massachusetts high school distance running.

After Catholic Memorial’s cross-country wrinkles were ironed out (such as the ties that occurred in the varsity and junior varsity races of the first CMI) and Barry’s conglomeration of athletes started to jell, he brought the boys to New York City’s historic Van Cortlandt Park to run in an invitational, “because I figured you should go with the best,’’ Barry said. “I wanted them to have big exposure.’’

For Barry, 75, mediocrity was unacceptable. He aimed for the stars.

“I always believed in excelling them, running them as hard as they could. I think a lot of them, through God’s grace - personally that’s the way I feel - they extended themselves, they became better runners, better people. That’s what I was really interested in,’’ Barry said.

Bill Leahy, the winner of the inaugural CMI freshman race and Massachusetts’s current chief counsel at the committee for public counsel services, remembers Barry’s exuberance as a young coach.

“Sometimes he could be as passionate as one of the kids and he was a lot of fun to run for because everything was upbeat,’’ Leahy recalled. “I’m sure there were times where we ran poorly and he was disappointed in how we did, but I don’t recall him ever expressing disappointment. It was always, ‘We’ll get ’em next time,’ or ‘We’ll work a little harder,’ or ‘We can do this, we can beat this team.’ A very, very positive figure, a very energetic figure, very animated. He was a great motivator.’’

Leahy and John Boyle, a 1962 CM graduate and current teacher and assistant cross-country coach at St. John’s Prep in Danvers, were the first standout runners Barry worked with. Boyle remembers that back in those days, training on Baker Street was an obscure practice.

“Nobody knew what you were doing out there,’’ he said. “In the late ’50s, if you were out running on the street, there was a policeman chasing you.’’

But as Boyle, Leahy, and their teammates progressed, Barry’s influence on them only grew.

“A man like Jim Barry was my model for what you should be when you turn into a man,’’ Boyle said. “His commitment and the amount of time and effort he put into working with kids - and he got nothing out of it except the satisfaction of working with kids and watching them grow up a bit. That’s what I’ve spent the past 40-something years trying to do.’’

Brother Barry left CM in 1962. His tenure may have been short, but his impact is still felt on the third Saturday of every October. And even though the Massachusetts State Track Coaches Association and Brown University have instituted similar invitational meets on the same day as the CMI, Barry’s race still draws a core group of schools because of its tradition, which stems from its location, Franklin Park.

“I don’t think it would be the meet it is at another site,’’ said Catano, coach of CM cross-country since the mid-’70s and responsible for opening the race to girls in 1981. “If we went to some reservation in some city or town, they’re nice to run through, but the attraction of the CMI is the venue.

“Any place that is run consistently in big meets and state meets, the course times are meaningful. For example, Van Cortlandt Park is the equivalent of Franklin Park in New York City. They haven’t changed the course since the park opened. Every runner who’s ever run [at] that park can say, ‘This is what I ran there,’ and you can look at the top 20 times of all time. And that’s what track is about: it’s a sport that’s measurable. Since we moved [in 1991] to the park course we’re on now, you can measure it each year.’’

The times - Archbishop Williams’s Bill McDonald ran 15 minutes 7 seconds on the 2.7-mile course in 1960 to break the tape; Francis Hernandez of Bishop Guertin (N.H.), a 15:48 on the current 3.1-mile trek in 2008 -- are memorable. The years - 50 consecutive - are concrete. But the appreciation that Jim Barry and CM deserve for uniting runners from across the state is immeasurable.

“The great thing is that the start-up school, the fledgling school had the pride and the gumption to put on its own meet 50 years ago when it was brand new,’’ Leahy said. “And now, here we are in a new century and the thing is still going strong. It’s a great tribute to the founders of CM and to Brother Barry.’’