Memories of Penn. If you’ve ever run there or even watched some races there you know that Franklin Field is a special place where everything is larger than life and school and work and everything else seem far away. The brickwork, the track, the environment, the Team. You go to the Penn Relays to be part of a relay team and the bond that you forge as part of that relay lasts a lifetime. You may not keep in touch, you may not even know where those people are, but once you’ve run a relay at Penn, you will always be part of a team that ran there. That race will be frozen in time forever in your mind and the minds of your relay team. Every turn, every step will be etched in your mind as the time you ran at Penn.
New Jersey has a rich and storied past at Penn, located as it is just across the Delaware. From the high school level up through college and beyond, Penn wouldn’t be the same without its Jersey contributors and all you have to do is look down through the list of athletes in each event to see that.
One thing that caught my eye as I was looking through the list of college competitors is the large number of former NJ high school standouts (and Penn relay competitors) that are now running at Penn again in college. Each one of these athletes has a story to go along with their former visits to Penn. Each one has a different perspective of how they got there, how they felt at the time and in each case, those memories are tied to the stories of their relay teammates in some way. Here are just a few:
In the women’s CTC 4x400 you may have seen a few names for small New Jersey colleges: Katie Walsh anchoring for Ramapo College, and my daughter Erin Frye running for Georgian Court. What you might not know is that both girls have now run in the same 4x400 heat at Penn for three straight years. As seniors at tiny Point Boro HS they were on the same 4x400 team at Penn and they now run for their respective colleges and have been running for competing schools in this event for the past 2 years. These two had been on many of the same relay teams throughout their high school careers from the 4x100 up to the 4x800. When were they first on the same 4x400 relay? The 7th grade. Naturally as a proud father, the relationship between my daughter and Katie is what started me thinking about all this and looking for more.
In the women’s Heptagonal 4x400 we find another story. If you’ve followed track in the Shore Conference over the past few years, or are just a fan of track in NJ, then you know the names of Gabriella Kelly and Melissa Bellin. They both ran for Rumson Fair-Haven High School and competed on their 4x400 team here at Penn. Now they find themselves in the same heat but for different schools (Kelly runs for Yale and Bellin, Harvard). You can’t make this stuff up, it’s just part of the fabric of Penn.
And finally, in the college Distance Medley Championship of America we have an amazing story in the seeded heat. You don’t even need to follow Shore Conference track or even high school track to have heard about Southern Regional High School, their track program and the incredible success they’ve had in the recent past. If you are a fan, you know that Danielle Tauro, Jillian Smith and Chelsea Cox went to Southern Regional together and were part of several relays over the years here at Penn and in 2007 they won the high school Championship of America Distance Medley. As as pair Tauro and Smith were on many as well, as were Smith and Cox. This year's DMR Championship of America saw Tauro and Smith (1200 and 1600) competing for Michigan and Cox (800) competing for Georgetown in the seeded heat. Now no one who knows this sport would ever pick against Tauro and Smith, but in this race on this day, Georgetown was the group running a victory lap after their heat and Cox was part of the group. And you know what else? Renee Tomlin of Ocean City (right down the road from the Shore Conference) led off that Georgetown win.
These are just a few of the hundreds or thousands of stories that will be part of family traditions and fond remembrances by competitors for years to come.