10 Questions With...Joe Lanzalotto

NJR - Describe your New Balance Nationals experience in 25 words or less.                                   

 JL - Hot, busy, frustrating, satisfying, different, awesome (especially the 4x800s, DMRs and girls’ SMR), rewarding, hot, new (New Balance’s first year).  Oh, did I say hot?

 

NJR - Your role with the NSSF? 

JL - I do a lot of recruiting for the meets (NIN and NBN) for New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania and freelance in other states.  I’ve worked to bring athletes to the meet from places like California, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, etc.  I love this part of it – I get to go to track meets, talk to athletes and coaches, watch the results for new faces and teams that we would like to have at the meets, etc. I also spend significant time prior to the meets validating seed times to ensure that every athlete and team gets a fair shake.  I know some will find it shocking but coaches actually make mistakes with seed times.  Tough to believe, I know.  Some of this gets to be a grind at times but I think it’s important to be sure that the playing field is as level as possible.  No matter what, however, someone is going to be mad at you unless you decide to line ’em up XC style on the track and let ‘em all run in one heat. Kind of an adjunct to my role with NSSF is what I do for NXN.  The event is Nike’s but NSSF works with them to promote and put on the meets.  I am the state representative (they call it “ambassador”) for New Jersey and last year I was the team manager for the Northeast teams that made the NXN final.  I love going out to Portland to the Nike campus and the course.  It’s a great time and a great experience for the athletes.  Anyone who has ever been there can tell you that.

 

NJR - Your running background was?                                                                                 

JL - I was a quarter miler and long jumper for Paramus Catholic class of 1970.  I also ran the 880 leading off our COA DMR (880 was the 1^st leg in those days) and COA 2 mile relay teams at Penn that year and ran XC all four years, although I always made sure I came out late so I didn’t have to sweat it in August.  I won the first medal ever in PC history, a XC race my frosh year at Warinanco (somewhere Lambert is groaning).  Coach chased me all the way around the track screaming that there were guys coming up behind me and I was so scared I passed two guys ahead of me.  When I crossed the line and turned around I realized that I had been lied to – there was no one else on the track except for those two guys I had passed.  A famous coach I know from Long Island has a saying: “if you can’t lie, you can’t coach”. I guess so.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

 NJR - Other than Mike Glynn, who has had the most influence on your involvement with the      T&F community?                                                                                                             

JL - Who’s Mike Glynn?  Kidding, Coach, just kidding. Paul Limmer, without a doubt. We argue about training all the time, but in the end he’s a great coach and has forgotten more than most people will ever know.  Jim Schlentz, who is as analytical as anyone could ever be.  Jack Daniels (I’ve done a LOT of reading!).  Justina Casavel who never, ever stops learning and doesn’t care who she learns from as long as it helps her kids.  Brian Gould – managing those talents over 4 years and having them get better and better is a real talent.  Lastly, Kevin Byrne.  He’s not technically a coach but we talk training all the time and he knows his stuff.   Fortunately, he won’t read this because his head is big enough as it  is.                                                                                                                                                  

 

NJR -  Did you really drive a New York City taxi cab?                                         

JL - Oh, yeah it was horrible.  Driving a cab in NY in 1972, part of a broken down fleet from the Bronx near NYU where I went to school.  Hot beyond belief (many of the fleets did not have AC back then).  But we also had some fun doing things with the cars I had better not talk about.

 

 NJR -Your favorite season?

JL - Not even close – outdoors.  A season that is way too short.  Not much that can be done about it here in the northeast I guess but there is too much emphasis on XC and indoors and not enough on outdoors.  Don’t get me wrong, I love XC and indoor track but if I had my way, those seasons would be shorter and outdoors longer.

 

 NJR -  All time favorite movie?

JL - The Searchers – John Wayne.  I love westerns and that one is the best of the best.

 

NJR - 3 Guys you’d want with you in a foxhole?

JL - I’d never want to be caught in a foxhole but if I were, I’ll take Rambo, the Terminator and Grouch Marx (hey, you have to have someone to talk to while the others are doing their thing).

 

NJR -  What do you see down the road for HS Cross / T&F?

JL -Many changes and few of them good, if we don’t work to steer the sport the way that would be best for the athletes.  This budget crisis is not going away and it is hardly isolated to New Jersey, although we may be feeling it harder here than some other places.  The rate at which seasons are being cancelled (I’ve heard of numerous schools cancelling XC and/or indoor track) seems to have caught up with the number of colleges killing men’s track.  Frankly, I don’t see why athletes and coaches should sit still for it.  Those same schools would never kill football or basketball, soccer or LAX.  Why should track and XC be picked on when it is near the top of the list in terms of participation nationally? At some point, if the schools keep this up, they are going to open the doors wide for an alternative for those who are serious about the sport.  Perhaps that will be clubs and a bigger and better system will develop, I don’t know.  But I am afraid that even if that happens, lost will be the kids who are not quite top level, who go out for the team because they like being on a team, like to be fit, whatever and the sport is offered by the place they have to be 8 hours a day.  Could be that some/many of those kids will not bother if the effort to get to a club practice infringes on study and social time and that’s a problem.  Track/XC teaches good things and forces those who are at least a little serious to be fit and we certainly need more of that in this country. The thing is, while there is plenty of chest beating and crying about taxes no one seems to be bemoaning the loss of the positive aspects of the sport and that is worrisome          

 

NJR - And lastly, your lists of the greatest NJ High School Cross / T&F athletes.

JL -

Wendy Vereen

Danielle Tauro

Michelle Rowen

Joetta Clark

Barbara Friedrich

 

Marty Liquori

John Marshall

Milt Campbell

Renaldo Nehemiah

Carl Lewis

 

 Thanks Joe!               

 

Front Page Photo Courtesy of Marnie Goddard Carter