Girma Segni: A pretty remarkable career

Here are Girma’s splits for Friday’s finale at IC4As in Princeton:

69, 2:19 (70), 3:30 (71), 4:41 (71)
5:52 (71), 7:02 (70), 8:11 (69), 9:23 (72)
10:36 (73), 11:48 (72), 13:01 (73), 14:14 (73)
14:49.21 (35.21)

Girm has heard some good-natured joshing about how “weak” his school records are from his hot-shot younger teammates, who vow to obliterate his numbers from the Marist Track/XC record books. I certainly do not discourage such bravado as it shows these guys care and really believe they will get faster.

However, I do have one message for them, pun intended: Not so fast, fellas.

Say whatever you want about the numbers, but they are what they are, and it is hard to argue the fact that Girma Segni graduates as the best long-distance runner in school history. The facts are indisputable:

--In cross country, he owns the fastest VCP time in school history and five of the top 10 performances there. VCP is the only standard measure of past and present, as it is the only course that has been run by every Marist cross country team since 1963. In addition, he was all-MAAC all four years in leading the team to four consecutive runner-up finishes to Iona. And he led the team to a program-best 10th place at regionals in 2008.
--In track, he has the indoor 5k and outdoor 5k and 10k marks. They are what they are. If they are so weak, how come no one has broken them yet? The bar has been set for next year’s team, and every other team in the future, until the numbers get broken and the times get shattered.

There has also been this unspoken, underlying current – in my opinion – that goes something like this: “Oh well, Girma’s an Ethiopian, of course he should run fast!” Some feel he should have run faster. Again, this is another myth. Aside from being a borderline racist sentiment, it’s just not true. Here’s why.

Girma never ran while he was growing up in Ethiopia. He did not run a step, unless it was playing soccer with his friends. When he moved to this country at the age of 16, he had no running background. He did run and race in high school at Brooklyn International, but he really did not “train” for the sport. His own high school coach told me so, saying Girm would maybe jog 2 or 3 miles for practice and rarely if ever did any formal workouts. About the only formal training he would do would be for a few weeks in the summer with his Westchester Track Club friends, and that really wasn’t until late in his high school career.

So upon entering Marist in the fall of 2005, Girma was far from an experienced runner. He did not really start training seriously until that fall, and quickly ramped up his mileage. Fortunately in his years here, he never had any serious injury issues that would cost him more than a few days of missed training time. His times improved steadily and sometimes dramatically, but he had setbacks and bad races as well – much like runners new to the sport experience.

One other aspect that is often overlooked: Girma was a great student, but he had to work extremely hard at it – probably twice as hard as your average American kid – because he was in a challenging curriculum, but also because it just flat out takes him longer to read and write in English. Put yourself in his shoes: Imagine being uprooted at age 16 and planted in a foreign country without a hint of the language. And then imagine trying to perform and succeed at the highest level of academics and athletics in that country.

Hopefully, this gives you a fuller picture of Girma’s amazing career at Marist. Obviously, on a personal level, I am very proud of everything he has accomplished on and off the track during his five years at Marist College.

Since this blog did not exist for the first half of Girm’s career, I felt it was important to provide all of this background. Also, it is fresh in my mind as Girma and I discussed his career and his life in detail on the van ride down to Princeton Friday afternoon. His five years here flew by, and by and large they were successful in every aspect: This coming Friday, he gets his Masters Degree to go along with his undergraduate diploma he earned last May.

So yeah: It would have been nice for Girm to go out with a faster final race on the wet Princeton track Friday night. But if you look at the body of work – on and off the track – it was a pretty remarkable career, one that I will never forget.