Good to Great

How can you tell that an athlete with great promise will become a great runner?

At the 2003 Mass All-State outdoor state championships, there was a lot of promise on display in the distance events. For the girls, there was Ari Lambie running 4:37 to win the girls mile (with Lindsay Donaldson second). Both have had highly successful college careers, Lambie at Stanford and Donaldson at Yale.

For the boys in 2003, Victor Gras (a junior), ran 4:09 to win the boys mile and qualify for the seeded heat at the Nike Outdoor Nationals. Behind him, Andrew Pitts ran 4:13, and Nick Krouse, 4:16, and Keith Gill 4:20. In the 2-Mile, Chris Barnicle (a sophomore) ran 9:04, which was one of the top soph times in the country and only four seconds off the meet record. Mike Banks (a junior) was injured that Spring, but he would get healthy over the summer and go on to run 4:11 in the mile and 9:06 in the 2-mile in his senior year. It was a year of great promise!

And yet, a case could be made that among the boys running that day, the runner who has had the most successful and impressive college career would be Sean Quigley, who, as a HS senior in 2003, finished a distant second to Barnicle in the 2M. Quigley went on to La Salle University and has been a monster in the distance events there.

For example, among Gras, Barnicle, Banks, Pitts, and all the rest of the Mass runners in 2003, Quigley has the best time at 1M, 3K, and 5K. Quigley was good enough in high school to win a Div II State XC title, a New England track title in the 2M, and the NSIC 5000m title. But he was overshadowed by Gras and Barnicle. I don't know how many people tagged him as "great" in H.S., but look at his PR's now:

1M 4:02.04
3K 8:04.25
5K 13:49.62
10K 28:29.61

Yikes! In fact, his most impressive PR might be his 10K on the track, which he set this season. His time of 28:29 is good enough to qualify him for the NCAA Div I finals in that event and for the next U.S. Olympic Trials.

This Friday, Quigley is scheduled to run the 5000m at the NCAA Div I East Regionals.

For further reading, here's a recent Boston Globe article about Quigley.

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Postscript: In that same 2003 meet, Dan Vassallo also ran the 2-Mile. he was in the slow heat and recorded a time of 10:01.29, finishing 19th overall. I'm pretty sure no one tagged him as a likely college star. Vassallo went to Colby where he blossomed as a distance runner. This season he has run 31:05 for 10K and recently finished 2nd in the 5000 at the NE Div III Championships. So hang in there, all you 10:00 2-Milers; you, too, can go from good to great.