Running off the Court: Let's Laud Our Other Athletes

Almost two weeks have passed since Andrew Bumbalough ran a sub-four minute mile at the Giegengack Invitational, but you probably don’t know anymore about the easy going Tennessean than you did before he raced into the upper echelon of track and field forever.

In the two weeks since Bumbalough’s amazing feat, you have learned of Roy Hibbert’s glory days at Georgetown Prep and of Jon Wallace’s resurrection against Villanova, but more than likely, you have not been told of how Bumbalough’s 3:58:46 made him the first Hoya to break four minutes indoors in over a quarter century. Or that his thrilling charge around the track was a full second faster than Sir Roger Bannister’s record-breaking time in 1954. Or that Bumablough’s mark qualified him for the NCAA championships. Or that he is only the 297th American to ever travel 5,280 feet in less than 240 seconds.

Other than a couple congratulatory remarks from passing strangers on campus and a handful of anonymous posts on his Facebook wall, Bumbalough says he has largely gone unnoticed.

Which is fine for the shaggy-haired redshirt sophomore, who is more comfortable in his own skin than the majority of Division I athletes.

“It doesn’t bother me,” Bumbalough says of the lack of attention he has received from his peers since his sub-four in New Haven on Feb. 2. “I don’t do it for that reason. I don’t expect people to care about my accomplishments as much as those of the basketball team.”

It is difficult to draw parallels between team and individual sports, but Bumbalough equates running a sub-four mile to logging a triple-double in basketball.

Can you imagine the pandemonium a Hibbert triple-double would create? When you consider that Bumbalough’s run came at Yale’s hallowed Coxe Cage — a rickety facility Bumbalough likens to an “old factory” — it would be like Big Roy going for 20, 10 and 12 in Cameron Indoor Stadium.

And what did Bumbalough do for an encore? Not much — except qualify for the NCAAs in the 3000 last weekend at the New Balance Collegiate Invitational.

It’s a shame that we haven’t celebrated Bumbalough’s accomplishment more. When the basketball program captured its fifth Final Four last March, we turned M Street into a war zone and then welcomed Jeff Green and Co. back to campus with a pep rally. When Bumbalough became the fifth Hoya to log a sub-four indoor mile, a few people came up and said, “Nice work.”

With the majority of my time and word count dedicated to following men’s hoops, I am as guilty as anyone. But we should all heed Bumbalough’s accomplishment as a wake up call and begin to acknowledge other feats of athleticism on campus for all they are worth.

Bumbalough is used to sprinting from the shadows of taller men. As a three-time state champion runner at Brentwood Academy in Nashville, Bumbalough shared the spotlight with current Golden State Warriors forward Brandan Wright, who led the Eagles to four consecutive state titles in basketball.

“I never felt overshadowed by Brandan — he was so gracious,” Bumbalough recalls. “We were at the top of our respective sports and there was a huge mutual respect between the two of us. My accomplishments were never overshadowed by his.”

Bumbalough was recruited by cross-country juggernauts like Colorado and Wisconsin, but settled on the hoops-crazed Hilltop because of its sterling academic reputation and the slightly milder climate. Glancing out the window on a sleet-driven, 30 degree day, the warm-blooded southerner admits that some days it is hard to push on, knowing that few are charting his progress.

“Just waking up and seeing that it’s dark and that I have to get out of bed and go running in sleet and cold, yeah, that sucks,” Bumbalough admits. “But by going and getting up and running every morning instead of sleeping in, that’s satisfying for me personally — I’m a believer that using my talents like that is a manifestation of God’s good graces towards me.”

Bumbalough will continue to pound the pavement so long as he is able, attention be damned. After two injury-plagued seasons, he is relishing the rhythm of a 70-mile-a-week training schedule that includes double dips two times a week and fourteen-mile runs on weekends.

He plans on participating in this summer’s Olympic trials for the “experience” and sees the 2012 Olympics as a reasonable goal. But don’t expect him to be crushed if it doesn’t work out. Bumbalough is a rarity among elite athletes, one that has achieved equilibrium between killer instinct and complacency.

“The people that know me best know that I am competitive as hell and that I hate to lose at anything — but at the same time, the way I’m able to keep calm and not let that consume me is to go out and do other things that relax me and take me away from it,” says Bumbalough, an avid outdoorsman and music aficionado. “That’s truly who I am. So many guys get so obsessed with going out and beating people and running, that it just isn’t fun anymore. That’s miserable. Running is a big part of me, competition is a big part of me, but I have found a way to balance myself.”

It is easy to see why we hold athletes like Hibbert in such high regard. Very few of us will ever be seven feet tall, stand at center court at the Final Four, or sink a last-second shot to beat UConn. And it is easier for us to simulate the high that Bumbalough feels each time he finishes a long run on a sunny afternoon.

But only a handful will ever know the feeling of standing alone at the starting line, to gulp down the potent cocktail of fear and excitement; nothing but you, time and the track ahead. Nor will we know the intoxicating combination of intolerable pain and unadulterated joy Bumbalough felt when he crossed the finish line on Feb. 2, knowing that he had taken all of what God gave him — and stretched it as far as it could possibly take him.

Yes, it is easy to see why we idolize our basketball team. But it should be just as simple to recognize that there are countless other athletes among us who are equally worthy of our praise.

Harlan Goode is a senior in the College. He can be reached at goode@thehoya.com. The Goode Worde appears every Friday in HOYA SPORTS.