Mickey Burke – Taking It All in Stride
The Wink 
Within an hour of the start to the 2013 Footlocker High School National Cross Country Championships, the Northeast Region boys’ contingent joked to themselves: Who would be bold enough to wink at one of the cheerleaders before entering the finish chute?
In the final strides before securing a fourth place, All-American finish, Rush-Henrietta runner Mickey Burke gathered the audacity to do just that.
“I was hoping it didn’t come across the wrong way,” remarked the Syracuse-bound senior. “I heard them cheering, and it was just a natural thing—I turned and winked.”
Burke was not always so suave on the course. While a perusal of his track and cross country performances on TullyRunners.com—including a 183 freshman speed rating—might lead an observer to conclude that it has been a sure and steady ascent into national elite status, there was a time when, despite his inborn talent, Burke was overwhelmed by the high expectations.
“He was white as a ghost,” recalled Mike Burke, Mickey’s father and then-assistant-coach, about his son’s appearance at the 2010 New York State Public High School Athletic Association (“NYSPHSAA”) Championships. “He won sectionals that year as a freshman. All of a sudden he is the Section V Champion going to the state meet, and on the bus ride down I think he felt the pressure.”
Race-day nerves got the best of the inexperienced harrier. Burke finished a respectable 32nd among Class AA runners at the Lakeside Park course, but compared to his sectionals breakthrough the week before, it was an underperformance.
“He went in there and felt the weight of the Section on his back,” recalls Mike DeMay, head coach at Rush-Henrietta. “He told me he never wanted to feel that way again.”
Mickey’s older brother Colby, now a Geneseo Knight, toed the line alongside Mickey that day and considers the experience a “game-changer” in his younger brother’s competition mentality.
“At that point in the season we knew we were in contention for a state title, so there was a lot of pressure on Mickey.”
Colby recalls Burke trembling on the line in the moments before the start.
“But the way he responded afterward was phenomenal. Mickey realized he couldn’t let the pressure get to him. From that moment forward he has never made too much of a race—if he wins he wins, if he loses, he moves on.”
Since then it has been steady vibes for Burke, who has learned to harness the nervousness that weighed him down on that Dutchess County golf course into competitive energy.
“I think the thing that separates him from the pack is that he never gets too high when he wins or too low when he loses,” opined Mike when asked about his son’s racing mindset.
His ability to maintain equilibrium, upon both victory and defeat, has been central in Burke’s development from a precocious freshman into one of the nation’s premier high school distance runners. The adrenaline and anticipation is still there, but according to Burke, instead of wearing it on his sleeve (or skin tone, as he did at States in 2010), “it’s an internal thing. I never try to expose my competitiveness and determination.”
All in the Family
The Burke bloodline carries a rich running tradition. Burke’s father and uncles competed for Rush-Henrietta throughout the 1970s and early-1980s, garnering numerous awards and accolades. “My brother and I started that legacy in the early 70s,” Mike explained. “We were fortunate to have a lot of success.”
And like a rite of passage, the Burke boys followed suit. Older brothers Jeremy and Colby laced up their spikes for the Comets in the early and late 2000s, respectively. And then it was Mickey’s turn.
“We grew up, me and my brothers, as big-time athletes,” Burke remembered. “We played every sport we could—soccer, baseball, football, basketball—and they all worked out pretty well.”
But these youth sports were mere precursors to what had become a truism in the Burke household. “Once you got to middle school it was just like, now you start up modified cross country,” Burke recollected. “It was just the process in the house; it was a given.”
The revitalization of the Rush-Henrietta distance program, from dormancy to relevancy, over the past decade played a crucial role in Burke’s early acculturation into the sport.
“There were so many kids over the past ten years doing special things. Teddy Quinn was the main guy. Mickey held him to such high-esteem,” states Mike. Mickey spectated at many of his older brothers’ meets, absorbing the sport.
“Mickey was quiet and young and was able to take it all in—we had no idea how much he enjoyed it.”
Accordingly, Burke entered the family business not out of familial ritual, but on his own accord. Unaware of this, his father, then the modified cross country coach, addressed the unspoken expectation that Burke was to undertake the sport.
“I sat him down and told him that just because his older brothers ran didn’t mean he had to,” said Mike. “He told me not to worry, and that he wanted to run.”
And did he ever run. When asked why he dropped team sports—specifically basketball, the sport in which he showed the most promise—in favor of the thankless pursuit that is running, Burke explained how his initial success had him hooked.
“I have no idea what I was thinking going into modified cross country, but as soon as I ran that first race, I was just excited and ready to see where I could take my running.”
The family legacy is important to Burke, but when asked why he runs, his immediate response is more personal in nature: “Mentally, it clears my head. It’s one of those sports where you hate every minute of it, but you also love it because it will be with you the rest of your life.”
Cross Country 2013: A Late Start
At the McQuaid Invitational Burke made a late, but grand, entrance into his final high school cross country campaign.
Sure, it was the last weekend in September. Most runners at that point had at least two invitational meets under their belts. Burke would just have to shake out the rust a bit later than usual—or so he thought.
Things did not go to plan. Burke toughed the balmy Indian summer weather, ripping through the 3.0 mile course in 14:25, an all-time course record.
“There wasn’t much rust,” chuckled Burke. “I was pretty surprised by it.” Burke gapped the stacked field early and never looked back, winning by 20 seconds. “McQuaid just happened to play out well; I was really happy with it.”
The next weekend was the prestigious Manhattan Invitational in Van Cortlandt Park, and, in light of his McQuaid performance the week before, Burke was a marked man. Plagued by an upper respiratory infection, he toughed out a solid 12:23.8, finishing third overall on the unforgiving 2.5 mile course.
“I knew that Manhattan wasn’t going to end well, but I tried not to assume that mindset. I definitely wasn’t too thrilled with the result.”
Winning his third Section-V Cross Country championship, Burke easily qualified for the NYSPHSAA Championships at Queensbury High School, and the stage was set. Heavily favored to win based on his McQuaid performance, Burke was content to settle into the lead pack early—a strategy that saw the race leaders passing through the first mile in a relatively pedestrian 5:10.
“It was a tortoise race,” Burke recalls. He considered surging at the mid-way point, but decided otherwise. “I just said to myself, this is going to come down to a kick, and I am going to have to trust my speed.”
It was a rational thought for a runner boasting track splits of 50.3 and 1:54.0 in the 400 and 800, respectively, but it backfired.
“Those guys were ready,” Burke admitted about race winner Bryce Millar of Fayetteville-Manlius and runner-up finisher Mike Brannigan of Northport. “It came down to a 600 meter sprint. It could have been anybody’s race. I should have separated things in the backwoods.”
It was a photo finish. Millar barreled through the finish line clocking in at 15:06.3, a course record, edging Brannigan by three-tenths of a second and Burke by a full second.
Tactical oversight, coupled with a clutch performance by Millar, cost Mickey the state crown—a title which still eludes him. The disappointment that followed was immense but fleeting.
“We had a conversation maybe two hours after the finish,” explained Mike. “I told him, don’t worry about the race, I know this was something you wanted, but you can’t get stuck on this.”
As Mike recalls, Burke’s response was as assured as it was matter-of-fact, characteristic of his son’s willingness to take setbacks in stride: “He told me not to worry about it.”
When older brother Colby reached out to discuss the race, he was met with a similar response. “Mickey didn’t want to dwell on it; he said he needed to focus on Foot Locker Northeast Regionals.”
Redemption
The knee-jerk reaction would have been to enter Burke in the New York State Federation Championships, held at Bowdoin Park in Poughkeepsie one week after the NYSPHSAA Championships. While Burke had not planned to run the annual race—comprised not only of public high school runners, but also those hailing from Catholic and private schools—the race offered an opportunity for immediate redemption.
The alternative was a three week countdown to Footlocker Northeast Regionals: a long time for Burke to chew on his defeat at Queensbury.
“Part of us wanted to enter him in the race at Bowdoin,” Mike conceded, “but Mick knows himself and that wasn’t part of the original plan.”
Burke did not rush headlong to the starting line at Federations. He would have to wait at least three more weeks to redeem himself.
“I had never run Federations in the past and it usually worked out pretty well,” reasoned Burke.
While his states performance did not sit well, the plan had been set in August and there was to be no deviation from it. Much as Burke’s competition schedule remained unaltered, there were also no changes to Burke’s training program.
“We kept with the formula that’s been working for a number of years,” said Coach DeMay. “We didn’t back off his training at all after states; he couldn’t back off if he wanted to take a serious shot at Footlockers.”
Burke stayed true to the training program that had served him so well, neither dialing down nor ramping up a training volume and intensity which, to that point, featured two workouts and 55 miles per week.
And then it was race day. Burke rolled into the Bronx with a serious chip on his shoulder.
“It felt like a whole new season,” Burke said about his mindset on the eve of the race. “I don’t want to say I needed to prove myself again, but for lack of a better word, I needed to prove myself again.” With a speed rating chronology of 197, 192, 193 and 193 to that point, the burden was on Burke to prove that there was nothing anomalous about his stellar opener at McQuaid.
According to Colby Burke, who warmed up with his brother in the moments before the start, whatever tension Burke felt inwardly, he refused to exude to his fellow competitors.
“He wanted to win the race, but he said he felt no pressure,” recalled Colby about their pre-race amble on The Flats. “I didn’t recognize any lingering effects from the state meet. Even in the week after states, from what I saw, he didn’t really reflect. He moves away from races regardless of the result. He turns the page.”
When the gun went off Burke surged into the lead pack where he remained situated for the entire Back Hills portion of the course. He was amongst the leaders as they powered downhill alongside the Henry Hudson Parkway and entered the closing stretch. Finish in sight, Burke swung around Connecticut’s Christian Alvarado and Alexander Ostberg, and built a small lead he would never relinquish.
With a Breathe-Right strip dangling from an anguished face, Burke crossed the line in 15:18.8, just ahead of Alvarado. It was the eighth-fastest clocking in the 35-year history of the event, but more immediately for Burke, it represented a ticket to San Diego.
At States, instead of dictating his own pace, Burke had overanalyzed his fellow Empire State harriers, causing reluctance on the course path.
“Regionals was awesome because, while I knew some of the guys, it’s not like New York where you know everybody’s time. You just run your own race. I knew if I ran my own race it would be enough to win.”
At regionals, for Burke—who set a torrid pace early in the race—ignorance was bliss.
Two weeks later at Foot Locker Nationals, Burke charted the Balboa Park course in 15:20, good for a fourth-place finish and his fourth All-American honor. Leading up to the competition, Burke had aspirations of a national title, but he harbors no regrets about his performance.
“On that day, I couldn’t have won the race. Physically, I gave what I had.”
Burke fell off pace in the middle of the course, but was able to make a late charge in the final 800-meters, improving from ninth to fourth.
“I think even if I had regained my focus earlier in that race, third is the best I could have finished on that particular day.”
Nevertheless, it was the highest finish by a New York boy since Steve Murdock’s third place showing in 2006.
Outlook
Burke has high expectations for both the upcoming track season and his collegiate career with the Orange.
“I am focused on running some solid times from the half-mile to the two,” Burke said, declining to cite goal times. “I haven’t won a state title yet, so that would be nice. And a national title—obviously everybody wants one of those.”
He recently cruised to a 9:27 3,200-meter on a flat indoor track, a carryover from the cross country season, but his season proper will commence early this month.
While Burke was heavily courted by top Division-I programs, he chose Syracuse due to its recent successes and proximity to home.
“With Syracuse basically being in my backyard, I am able to have the support of my friends and family,” Burke declared about his verbal commitment to the Orange. “But on top of that, you can’t beat a school an hour away that will contend for a national title during the next three years.”
An instant rapport with head coach Chris Fox was just the icing on the cake.
“Fox is an easygoing guy—so easy to get along with and talk to.”
Burke foresees himself as a 5,000-meter specialist in college, but does not discount the possibility of running other events. “I’ll run anything from the 400-meter to the 10,000-meter, but I feel like my prime event will probably be the 5,000-meters because it takes range and sometimes you need to have the speed, which I feel like I have.”
Whatever happens in the near and distant future for Burke, be it triumph or disappointment, he will keep things in perspective.
“I’m a really loose, easygoing guy. I’m definitely focused, but in a very positive way.”
It’s the even-keeled approach that has fueled his rise to national prominence: a mindset he hopes to maintain through the indoor and outdoor track seasons and carry forward into his collegiate career.
Burke refuses to allow his most recent race define him. He has proven time and time again that, with the wink of an eye, his fortunes can be reversed.
