BY MITCH ABRAMSON
“Don't worry, Gordon, we'll get you there,” the driver said, turning around to make eye contact. “We'll be there in five minutes.”McKenzie, still dressed in his Holy Cross basketball uniform, smiled and looked at the cars retreating from his window. They were going around 80 mph now, the utility vehicle ebbing and flowing like an airplane caught in turbulence. Up ahead, an unmarked police car plowed through city traffic, flashing a red light on its dashboard to clear the way. The Manhattan skyline unwrapped in front of them like the opening credits to a movie.McKenzie, a two-sport athlete at Holy Cross, was embarking on the second leg of a wildly ambitious plan Friday to play in a basketball game at 7:30 p.m. followed by running in the prestigious Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden at 10:18 p.m.”My girlfriend, Ashley Giles, thinks I'm crazy for doing this,” said McKenzie, who conceived the plan with basketball coach Paul Gilvary on Jan. 30 at the Tom Crotty Memorial Classic. “She didn't try to talk me out of it.”With the help of a police escort, McKenzie arrived at the Garden, still dressed in his basketball uniform, an hour before the race, and stunned the crowd by winning the high school boys' 60-meter dash in 6.97, slightly ahead of Erasmus' Kim Williams. The race was so close that Williams, who also finished in 6.97, was judged to have come in second based on a last second lean by McKenzie at the finish line.”In the photo, it was clear that his torso was ahead of the other runner,” a race official said. “He clearly won the race.”The explanation clarified what had been a flawed filing of the result on the scoreboard. Initially, McKenzie was listed as coming in third, with Lamont Downing, a star football player at Sheepshead Bay, the winner. As the screen absurdly shuffled the names like the times on a train schedule, McKenzie was eventually declared the winner.”My heart was in my throat the whole time that was going on,” his mother Mirlyn said. “That was difficult to watch.”Somewhere in the Garden, the driver responsible for getting McKenzie from Bayside to the Garden, the pivotal ingredient in the plan, in less than 20 minutes was smiling.”This is not the day of a normal kid,” McKenzie said after the race. “The day, the ride over here, this is not normal; I'm telling you! It was like a roller-coaster!”The odyssey began at 6:30 p.m. when McKenzie, a resident of Jamaica, arrived at Holy Cross to play Archbishop Molloy in a CHSAA 'AA' league game. Stanners' coach Jack Curran, aware of McKenzie's mission, smiled and compared his iron man stunt to LIU's William “Dolly” King, who in the 1930's scored 3 touchdowns in a football game and tallied 18 points for the basketball team in the same day.Trailing Molloy 47-31 at intermission in a game Holy Cross ultimately lost 74-55, McKenzie, a 5-foot-10 shooting guard, decided to scrap his original plan of leaving at halftime to play in the third quarter. It was a questionable decision, since the root of his anxiety could be traced to getting to the Garden in time for the race. His coaches conferred with him to make sure he understood what he was doing.”Just tell me whenever you want to come out,” Gilvary said. “I know you said you wanted to leave at 8:30. You still have some time.”Playing on a heavily taped right ankle that he injured in a game against Bishop Loughlin two weeks ago, McKenzie finished with 7 points and left with 3:10 remaining in the third quarter. He grabbed his gym bag, threw on his jacket, and with an MSG camera man rolling, ran outside where a police escort was waiting for him.”Where's Gordon?” said the driver who identified himself as a friend of the Police Department. “You're Gordon? Ok, get inside. We're outta here.”In squeezed McKenzie and Holy Cross' track coach Nydia Warner, who reminded him during the trip to keep thinking “of the third person” – a motivational reference to a speech she once gave him.”I told him that there are three types of athletes: the one who crumbles under pressure, the one who is overconfident to the point of arrogance, and the one who is confident in his own abilities,” she said. “And I asked him, 'Which one do you want to be?'”For most of the day leading up to the race, McKenzie had been passive to the point of being morose. Kevin Ogletree, his teammate on the basketball team and a star wide receiver on his way to the University of Virginia, picked him up after school in his car. McKenzie was a silent companion in the front seat, speaking little, seemingly pacing himself for what lay ahead.Together, they departed on an unscripted journey through southeast Queens, stopping at Ogletree's house in St. Albans and at Victor's Barber Shop in Hollis. In between, Ogletree dropped off and picked up Shokanni “Tiny” McKen, an aspiring rapper and basketball player at Holy Cross, blasted rap music to keep everyone alert and whispered on their cell phones. In retrospect, the zigzag trip was the perfect retreat for McKenzie, who wanted to avoid sleeping for fear of waking up in a haze.”The question tonight isn't physical,” Ogletree said as he waited his turn at the barber shop. “It's mental. Gordon has to focus on the mental approach. If I was a betting man, I would put my money on him. I know what he's capable of doing.”McKenzie was crowned the fastest kid in New York last summer when he won a 40-meter race in July that was sponsored by Nike. The apparel company erected a billboard of McKenzie in Times Square. Since then, the senior has been a part-time ambassador on the track and field circuit. He starts preparing for basketball, his first love, as early as October and admits that juggling two sports has sent mixed messages to college coaches unsure of whether to recruit him as a basketball player or a runner.Walking the tightrope further, he insisted on competing in both sports Friday even though he knew coaches from the Universities of Tennessee and South Carolina would be watching. In December, in an apparent walk-through performance, McKenzie played in a basketball game and then ran in the Hispanic Games the same day, notching second in the 200-meters, an event he holds the CHSAA record in.”I know coaches weren't giving me respect because I'm playing basketball,” he said after his victory. “Hopefully, this will show them that I'm serious. I'm not tired at all. I could run another race if I had to.”McKenzie attended a collegiate meet at the 168th Street Armory in Manhattan Saturday in the hopes of promoting himself to college coaches. His innovative idea, one that was not without serious risk, cobbled together with a splendid performance at the Millrose games, landed him a pair of invited visits to Tennessee and South Carolina in March, schools he hopes to receive scholarship offers from.”This was like a dream,” he said. “The day couldn't have gone any better.”Reach reporter Mitch Abramson by e-mail at TimesLedger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300 Ext. 130.
