We all had bad hair.
Although this may not be clearly obvious from some of these photos, rest
assured it was the mid- to late-1980s. Bad hair was good hair back then. Many
of us – too many of us – had mullets. In most cases, our hair was puffy,
feathered and just plain awful. But did we care? Of course we didn’t care! It
was the 1980s. We had bad hair and we listened to bad music. Nostalgia aside,
these are almost universally indisputable facts. Today’s Pandemic Papers takes
a trip back to a somewhat lost era of Marist Running. Steve Pierie was a
freshman in the fall of 1985, on a cross country team that featured numerous
seniors – including me. He describes meeting me and his new teammates at our
coach Steve Lurie’s running camp – Beginning Trails Running Camp (Hill
Busters!) in or around Andes, NY (where’s Andes? … look for “nowhere” on the
map, and Andes is in the middle of that). I seem to remember that year at camp,
getting lost on endless country roads and not finding my way back to Camp
Oquago after nearly 3 hours of running; this was way before Garmin watches but
it’s safe to say I ran well over 20 miles that day. No one cared or thought to
send out a search party. They just figured I was going longer because I wanted
to – I had that reputation back then. I remember eating and drinking an
enormous amount upon returning to camp, thankfully before dinner ended. My
nickname, to which Steve refers (Girder Pete), had to do with my freshman year
in high school, JV basketball, when I took a last-second shot that went clear
over the backboard and got stuck in the metal that holds up the backboard and
rim, as time expired. It was hilarious to everyone but the skinny point guard
who was humiliated at the poor aim. The nickname Girder Pete persisted
throughout high school; it persisted in college only because I was stupid
enough to tell my teammates this story.
After Steve’s freshman
year, I graduated in May of 1986. I didn’t start coaching until early 1991.
Steve populated three years of the five-year gap when I was not directly
affiliated with the program. Although I was still in Poughkeepsie, working at
the Poughkeepsie Journal, I was not all that close with the team during that
tumultuous era of the program. The volatile nature of the team back then kind
of robbed Steve of what could have been a much better college career, but based
on his answers here, he harbors no bitterness and seems grateful for his time
as a student and as a runner at Marist. Which is neat! To be able to stay in
touch with him and reconnect with him after all these years is special. Equally
special is his loyalty to our program. He follows the team. He knows the team
from afar (Steve lives in Kentucky). That’s really cool. Aside from exposing my
silly nickname and the very obscure running shoes I wore back then, there are
some great tidbits of information in here. “Debbie Bell” … one of the three
women’s coaches during his time at Marist? All of you probably know her as Deb
DiCaprio, who is the dean of students at Marist and oversees athletics. She’s
been at Marist her entire professional career. And yes, one of her early duties
was as women’s cross country coach. He also notes that his hometown of
Waterloo, NY, is the birthplace of Memorial Day (good timing with this post!),
although Wikipedia tends to disagree with this claim. Fun facts aside: It’s
pretty cool that Steve is still running and still active in the running community
where he lives. And it was great to hear about his life journey during the past
31 years. Thanks for doing it, Steve, and thanks for staying connected to the
program. You are a true Forever Fox.
It was a loooooooong time ago, but how did you
become interested in Marist, choose Marist and what other schools were you
considering? Were you recruited?
I grew up in Waterloo,
NY; a small, two stoplight town known best for being named the Birthplace of
Memorial Day and as the hometown of Tom Coughlin (he has a giant mural painted
on a downtown building). I assumed that I would attend Syracuse University. My
dad graduated there and I spent enough time on that campus as a kid attending
games at the Carrier Dome that I could probably walk the campus blind folded
and get my way around. My best friend in high school and I decided to go there
together. I thought I would go into sports broadcasting because of my love of
sports. I represented my high school on a weekly sports radio show. It was fun.
My only concern was that the logical side of me thought the odds were long for
making it successfully in that industry.
My senior year, I took a
course in Basic, an introductory programming language and I just loved it. I
now felt I knew what I would like to study in college. I also wanted to continue running if
possible. So I started looking at colleges that offered computer science as
major. I spent time looking at brochures and became intrigued by Marist. I
filled out the form and planned to visit the campus. As all of us “Forever
Foxes” know, once you get on campus you get hooked! Everyone was friendly, the campus was
gorgeous and with IBM’s presence coupled with a dedicated dorm for CS majors it
was a no-brainer. Syracuse did not have a great computer setup and really
wasn’t interested in me as a runner. So despite getting accepted at both
schools, I had to tell my best friend I wasn’t going to Syracuse.
Somewhere in there,
Steve Lurie started calling me. I assume he got the information about me and
was interested in having me join the team. He arranged for me to visit campus
again – I took my first airplane flight compliments of Marist. I don’t remember
much about the visit, just the thrill of flying, and the excitement of meeting
the team.
Tell us about your high school career. When and
why did you start running, what were some of your high school running
highlights, what high school did you run for, and any other details from that
long-ago time?
I attended Waterloo High
School. I pretty much played every sport you could as a kid; baseball,
basketball, football etc. In 8th
grade, I was asked to join the high school tennis team. All you had to do was
pass the physical. So I played tennis and basketball into my freshman year. I
didn’t play a sport in the fall, so the basketball coach recommended I go out
for cross country sophomore year. My first race in the JV, I ended up with the
3rd fastest time on the team. I ended up not making the basketball
team and thanks to my success in cross country, I gave up tennis in favor of
track. And the rest is history.
It’s funny, but most of
the memories I have from my high school running days are things that one
wouldn’t consider a highlight – like leading an invitational and failing to
make the first turn and watching the whole field run by, losing my spike in
giant mud bog trying to hurdle a creek at Baldwinsville and narrowly missing
out on states senior year. I was our team’s lead runner my junior and senior
years so I had some successes but it’s always through adversity that learning
and growth comes.
Talk about your time at Marist as an athlete. It
had its ups and downs. For our younger readers, describe how the program was
back then, the coaching, the seasons and anything else you recall from your
time as a runner at Marist.
The team was pretty
large, I’d say counting the track guys we had around 30 members. We had great
team leaders in Pete Pazik, Christian Morrison, Mike Murphy, Donald Godwin and
a lanky, Turntec wearing (I had never heard of that brand at the time), high
mileage runner that guys affectionately called Girder Pete Colaizzo. (Not my
story, so I won’t explain that one!)
Coach Lurie was
definitely a personality. He had a way explaining everyone’s PRs, but never
down to the tenths. It was always to the point. For example, he would say Garry
Ryan ran a 1:58 point, not 1:58.6. Every runner he ever talked about, that was
how he described them. He had a tone and a cadence about the way he spoke that
everyone on the team imitated. He also liked to experiment, always throwing
something new into our training routine. If he read it somewhere, he was
willing to try it. I remember him adding some yoga into our warmup routine by
making us do the sun salutation. We all
felt goofy doing it but looking back it was pretty progressive for that time.
Don Reardon, our top runner and comedian, would draw a picture of Steve’s head
and embed it in the cartoon he would draw for that week’s edition of the
Circle. We enjoyed trying to find him. Even Steve was good natured about it
when he found out what was happening.
At the time the big meet
for the team during cross country was the state meet, we didn’t start running
conference championships (we were in the Northeast Conference during my years
at Marist) until my sophomore year. We did well at states my freshman year (top
10 finish, if I recall correctly). Sophomore year, despite finishing second at
conference champs, we flamed out pretty badly at the state meet. Guys were
frustrated with the uneven training, several runners were injured and when
concerns were brought to the AD, Steve was removed as head coach. That left us
with no coach and that meant there would be no winter or spring track. I had
already lost most of indoor and all of outdoor the previous track season due to
mono so losing another year of track hurt. Little did we know that was the end
of track during my time at Marist.
We started my junior
year with no coach. The feeling on the team was that we were just a placeholder
so that Marist could stay Division I in basketball. We felt left out, the
school gave the basketball team new running shoes while we were still buying
our own gear. Rich Stevens took over and while the team still finished 2nd
again in the NEC, it was frustrating for the guys that were really more track
oriented as there was no season for them. By my senior year, I was the only
runner in my class still running, I think Bob Sweeney and Dave Blondin were
studying abroad. I was named captain, but that was mainly because I had the
most seniority. I drove the van to meets since I was the only one that was 21
and could be insured. I ran decently well senior year, but I had to do some of
the workouts on my own as I had an internship that prevented me making
practices several days a week and as a result I felt disconnected from the younger
runners on the team.
It was tough not having
track for the balance of my career, since mainly that is the season you
determine your PRs and I ended up never really knowing how fast I could run a
3k, 5k or 10k. I also lacked the continuity of a year-round training plan which
definitely hindered my development. But I loved my time as a Marist runner. We
had a great group of guys and personalities on the team. I have only great
memories, fun stories (like the nude mile and I will definitely let someone
else tell that tale!, arriving in Syracuse with the team van two hours ahead of
Coach Stevens, the dustup with Colgate midrace), and the satisfaction of
completing 4 years of running at a time when I could have easily quit.
What did you major in at Marist and how did it
prepare you for your post-collegiate career?
I majored in Computer
Science and minored in Mathematics. The influence of IBM and the number of
programming languages we studied prepared me for the volatility of working in today’s
ever-changing IT landscape. At my internship, I worked for Texaco Research
Center in Beacon. I remember having to teach myself Unix and how that prepared
me for the interviews for companies that were hiring on campus. I felt Marist’s diverse curriculum
and internships were in preparing me for the job world.
What year did you graduate Marist and walk us
through your work career -- jobs, cities, etc.
I was hired before I
graduated from Marist in 1989 by EDS. I
started with them in Morristown, NJ. I
transferred to Dallas in 1990; lived there for about 20 months working in
support of AT&T’s long distance bill generation before transferring again
to Chicago to support the United States Army Recruiting Command (USAREC)
stationed in Ft Sheridan, IL. I was
there until late 1992 when the base relocated to Ft Knox, KY. I have lived in Louisville, KY ever since
supporting the Army’s recruiting applications from the evolution of mainframe apps
written in COBOL, fat client apps written in Powerbuilder, client/server apps
in Java to mobile apps and cloud applications and services. I have worked with
the same basic company through its many iterations of acquisitions and
split-offs going from EDS to HP, to HPE, to DXC and now Perspecta. The job has
never seemed dull, there is always something new to learn. I have gained a ton
of respect for the men and women who serve our country.
Tell us a little bit about your family. When did
you get married, how many kids do you have, where do you live currently, how
did you get there ... all of it!
Well, I ended up staying
in Kentucky because I met and married my wife, Melissa here. I met her in 1994
and we were married in 1996. We have been
blessed with 4 children. My oldest, Samantha, is 21 and will be a senior next
year at Eastern Kentucky University. Lily, Lance and Ben are 16 and yes that
means they are triplets. I could probably could write a novel on the trials and
tribulations of raising triplets. It has been both a rewarding and exhausting
experience.
You've been graduated from Marist for more than
30 years. How much running have you done in that time -- races, marathons, etc.
What are some of your post-collegiate running highlights and PRs? And how much
are you running currently?
I won’t go into too much
depth. My time in Dallas I was fortunate enough to run in a 10k where I won my
age group but lost to a few people including a 19-year-old hotshot cyclist by
the name of Lance Armstrong. I also competed in but DNFed in the White Rock
Marathon in 1990 having to drop out at 23 miles from terrible foot pain that
turned out to be a stress fracture. It was disappointing because I was on pace
for around a 2:50 finish. It also coincidently was a marathon that Pete was
running in too. Looking back, I wish I would have crawled to that finish line
because I developed sciatica from two discs in my back shortly thereafter and
never fully recovered. I spent a couple of years rehabbing off and on but never
could get the strength back in my leg. I have run in several half marathons, my
back could never really hold up for the training required to do a marathon.
Louisville has a great Triple Crown series where you run a 10k, 10 miler and
the half or full marathon leading up to the Kentucky Derby in the spring. I did
a bunch of those until my late 30s when I took a long break from running when
the triplets were born as there was really no time to work out when they were
so young.
By my early 40s, I was
jogging to get back into some form of shape when some co-workers of mine
convinced me to sign up for the Bourbon Chase, which is a 200-mile team relay
through the countryside and distilleries of Kentucky. The run is beautiful and
I like that it really doesn’t feel competitive, just a few hundred teams of 12
people jumping out of a van to run three times over 25-30 hours. It totally
fits my personality and communal spirit. My favorite leg in that run is the
overnight run. Just the stillness of the night, the cool air and stars just
seems to bring out the best in me. I have run in 9 of these and body willing
the goal is to run 3 more so that I can complete all 36 of the legs. I run
about 4-5x a week now and maybe hit 20-25 miles a week.
You are an avid blog follower, which is great.
What differences do you detect from your time at Marist to what we have here
now?
Suffice it to say, the
biggest difference I see is the stability and continuity of the program. My
time at Marist saw two men’s coaches, three women’s coaches (Steve, Debbie Bell
and Pam White) and the complete upheaval of the track program. You and Chuck
not only stabilized the program, but have elevated the program competitively
not just in distance running but in the sprints, jumps and throwing events as
well.
The other differences
are symbolic of the changes in time. We ran indoors around the McCann track
while the basketball team was practicing and we did our 20x400 workouts in xc
at the high school. We used to scale the Mid-Hudson Bridge to get over to
Highland and ran endlessly through the Psych Center. We reviewed upcoming teams
with “The Good Scout” – a hand written
set of results compiled by the coach of the University of Rochester (I still
have a few them). I never stepped one foot into the weight room in my time at
Marist. Now strength training and the emphasis on core conditioning are as big
a part of running as the mileage run. You have a home meet at Vassar Farms. We
never had a home meet during my time at Marist. I would have loved to have had
the opportunity for a senior day.
.
How are you and your family handling the
pandemic? What are your thoughts on it and how is your area of the country
handling it?
Like all families, it
took us awhile to get into a routine. My daughter was studying in Spain when
the pandemic began. At first we were consoling her for missing out on opportunities
to travel to Italy, Portugal and Morocco during her spring break to waking her
up in the middle of the night to get her a flight out of Spain and back home
when the President started placing travel bans. She had to self-quarantine for
two weeks and had to finish her studies in at home. Fortunately her and her siblings are all
self-sufficient in their academics that it was basically just finding space
around the house to conduct Zoom meeting for 4 kids with 4 different schedules.
I had been working from home one day a week already, so transitioning to being
home every day and with kids around took some adjusting. My wife lost her job
as an Occupational Therapist as her caseload dropped. She is hopeful to return
as soon as restrictions are lifted here in Kentucky. Governor Beshear has been
very aggressive in closing things down early and utilizing a data driven
approach to reopening. I feel he has been very effective and has done a great
job with removing politics from the equation.
What message can you convey to our graduating
seniors?
Life is a journey. As
runners, we uniquely understand the ups and downs that come with training,
competing, and managing expectations; both yours and others. Some days we feel
great, some days we don’t. Nothing is perfect, plans sometimes have to be made
up on the fly. The good news is we don’t journey alone. Take the time to
reflect on your journey. Share both the highs and lows of your Marist
experience with as many people as you can. Know you have done amazing things
and will do amazing more. We all hurt for your losses. It is ok to hurt too. But don’t let this setback define you. While your
journey as a Marist athlete has ended, we alumni welcome you and will continue
to support you on wherever your journey takes you.
Anything else you'd like to add ...
Taking time to write
this has flooded my mind with great memories, too numerous to share here. It’s
been great to take that proverbial walk down memory lane. Thank you, Pete, for
this wonderful series. You have allowed us all to grow closer to our extended
Marist family. It has been great getting to know so many Foxes beyond just
their times on a race sheet. Congratulations to you and Chuck for bringing
stability and incredible success to Marist running. I wish you all well and
continued success. God Bless!
No comments:
Post a Comment