SPECIAL KIND OF TALENT

Beating a school record is never an easy task for a high school athlete. Standing between you and a place in history are scores of teammates both present and past. But to engrave your name in the books as a freshman - and to do it in your first few months of high school, at that - requires a special kind of talent.
For Gabriel Vazquez, a freshman runner from St. John's Prep, natural talent is complemented by an uncommon work ethic. “Every day, me and my father will work out,” he says. “During the summer, we would run six to seven miles a day, bike, swimming, constant working out every day. I'm thankful to have him pushing me there every day.”
Vazquez's efforts paid off in dramatic fashion on November 1, when he placed first in the boys' 2500-meter run at the CHSAA Freshman and Sophomore Intersectional Championship. He finished the race at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx with a time of 8:30.86 - not only shattering his personal best of 9:04 from the Brooklyn-Queens championships, but also besting the St. John's record by 34 seconds.
In case you were wondering, that averages out to 5:40.6 per mile.
“Me and my father for like that whole weekend, especially the night before, we were planning out the whole race, figuring out what we can do,” Vazquez says. “The gun went off and I was just trying to focus and relax and run my hardest, and it was a close race throughout the whole time.”
It was Vazquez, Regis freshman Ryan Phillips, and Chaminade freshman Thomas Awad who emerged as favorites midway through the 2500-meter race, populated entirely by first-year performers. But with about 800 meters to go, Vazquez and Phillips had managed to separate themselves from the pack. Down the final straightaway, they were running neck and neck.
“Me and [Phillips] were both fighting back and forth, back and forth. He was right on me, right on my shoulder,” Vazquez says. “With about 200 meters left, I just tried to make my final push, and I came out on top.”
For a race as long as the 2500-meter run, the margin of victory was tight. Phillips finished at 8:31.44, approximately 0.6 seconds out of first in a race where 13 full seconds separated second and third place. Awad left a mark of 8:44.97, avoiding fourth place by a margin of three seconds.
Vazquez, meanwhile, was ecstatic, saying that the run “felt better than any other race [and] was definitely my hardest race.”
The pre-race preparation, no doubt, played an important role in his first-place finish. So, too, did the contributions of his father, a basketball coach at Vazquez's middle school - and a former high school runner himself - who started a track team when his son was in eighth grade. It was the first time that Vazquez, who played basketball but had always been curious about track, had taken running seriously.
“Me and a few kids were interested, so he decided to try and start a team and it worked out,” Vazquez says. “We won the cross-country season there too, and I came in first place in those races as well.”
Some untapped talent was making its first appearance, just one year ago. But more than anything else, Vazquez credits his work ethic and his family's support with bridging the gap between eighth-grade prospect and high school record-holder. “It's my attitude towards it, my positive attitude and hard work,” he says. “My parents put that attitude into me. My sister and my mom are both very supportive and I'm thankful for that as well.”
These days, Vazquez finds himself watching Olympic track and field from time to time, and he lists Steve Prefontaine, the late American middle- and long-distance runner, and Jim Thorpe, the legendarily versatile pentathlon and decathlon gold-medalist, among his role models. Whether similar notoriety is among his future plans is an open question; Vazquez says he just wants to “take one day at a time, and see where it takes me.”
An adaptable athlete himself, he now has a St. John's freshman boys' basketball season to look forward to. After practice is over, he runs.
“I'm working hard every day,” he says, “and I hope God blesses me with the best.”