Garden City looks to join Sub-9 Club

By Christopher Hunt

GARDEN CITY -- There’s only one question that matters in track and field: How fast can you run?

When Garden City looks at its four best half-milers on paper that question could put the Eagles’ 4x800 relay in elite company. There are six teams in New York history that have ever broken the 9-minute barrier. Even with two middle-schoolers on the team, Garden City could be the seventh.

Take the Loucks Games last weekend for example. Emily Menges, the lone senior on the relay, won the 800 meters in 2:12.97. Her teammate, seventh-grader, Emma Gallagher set a personal best finishing third in 2:14.02. Katie O’Neill, who’s in eighth-grade, was 10^th in 2:16.67. Junior Michelle Rotondo didn’t race the 800 that day but ran a 2:13.6 split at Penn Relays two weeks earlier.

Add that up and Garden City runs somewhere around 8:57.3.

“It’s like dying and going to heaven except I didn’t have to die,” Garden City coach Charley Cuzzo said.

Cuzzo says that on a perfect day his group can run in the low-8:50’s. The state record is 8:50.41 set by Boys & Girls in 2002. Suffern, Bay Shore, Warwick Valley, Bronxville and Saratoga Springs are the only other New York teams to venture into the holy ground of sub-9. Bay Shore is the only team on Long Island to break through with stellar relays in 2003-05, clocking 8:53.26 in 2003.

Garden City finds itself in a unique opportunity. The Eagles had planned to attempt a sub-9-minute effort at the Loucks Games at White Plains but winds that reached up to 50mph thwarted that performance. Rotondo, Gallagher, O’Neill and Menges instead ran 9:15.30, 15 seconds ahead of the second-place finisher.

At Penn Relays, the Eagles finished fourth in the Championship of America, clocking 9:06.49 with Gallagher and O’Neill sitting in the stands since the meet doesn’t allow middle-schoolers in varsity races. The time is the best in the state and the second-fastest in the country.

Now with the Georgetown-bound Menges graduating, it leaves the team essentially a month to deliver with no more major invitational left this season. Cuzzo said they will likely go after a time at the state meet June 12 in Vestal. And it’s not just that Menges is leaving. Garden City found two middle-school runners that would be welcome on anyone’s varsity team.

Gallagher’s performance at Loucks broke a New York State seventh-grade record. Her uncle is Mike Going, a 4:09-miler at Wheatley in 1990.  O’Neill’s mother, Laura (Hastings) O’Neill was a half-miler at Yale in the mid-80’s. Both Gallagher and O’Neill played soccer and lacrosse before Garden City’s winter track coach Erica Fregosi found them at tryouts and ushered them onto the varsity squad.

“I used to think track was stupid,” Gallagher said. “I didn’t realize how much guts it took.”

Menges and Rotondo have taken on the role of mentors their younger teammates although when it comes to race time they haven’t needed a ton of guidance.

“They get really nervous so we have to calm them down,” Rotondo said. “But they are fine as soon as the race starts.”

Cuzzo and the relay have spoken about the possibility of breaking 9 minutes. They know it’s out there. They aren’t harping on it. But they see the carrot dangling.

“It’s pretty sick,” Menges said. “We think about how cool it would be to be up there with the best teams ever in the country.”