No Track, No Problem For Berlin Senior
by Ryan Mosher
In the fifteen years that Jen Burhans has coached the Berlin Track team, she has never had a track for her teams to call home. Practice used to consist of running around the parking lot but, in recent years, has been moved to the lower soccer field, which much of the time they share with a baseball team. Not having a home has never been an excuse for Berlin runners though. They have claimed league and sectional championships in track, and, for the fourth year in a row, one runner has advanced to the State Championship meet. Together with the cross country team, which consists of many of the same students, they are the most successful teams in the Berlin athletic department.
On Thursday night the school awarded both the male and female Most Outstanding Athlete awards to Berlin runners Ashley Rokjer and Casey Gilbert. On Friday afternoon, at the State Championships at Cicero-North Syracuse High School, Gilbert did something no other Berlin student-athlete has done. In the Division 2 400 meter hurdles championship, he held off rival Shane Wagner of Schuylerville to win the first ever New York State Championship for Berlin. Gilbert crossed the finish line in 54.01 seconds, while Wagner crossed in 54.62. The only person to record a better time in the 400 meter hurdles was the Division 1 and eventual Federation Champion Will Cole of Hamburg.
Gilbert and Wagner both moved on to the Federation Championship on Saturday, which pits the Division 1 and Division 2 runners against each other, as well as runners from the Catholic High School Athletic Associations, the Public Schools Athletic Association of New York City and the Association of Independent Schools Athletic Association. This race featured three runners from Section 2. With Cole and Gilbert recording the fastest times in the State Championship divisional races, they were next to each other in the middle
lanes. The two speedsters led the way for the first 250 meters, before Gilbert landed wrong coming over a hurdle and re-aggravated a sore hamstring. Despite that, he still finished strong and held onto second place until the last hurdle. At that point both of the other Section 2 runners were able to overtake him, and he took fourth place.
Although disappointed that he let his only shot at Cole get away, Gilbert was still happy to take his place on the Federation podium and even happier that he was able to bring home the Mountaineers’ first State
Championship.
“It feels great to be the champion,” he said. When asked if the pressure of being the first Mountaineer to win at this level entered his mind, Casey said, “No, I was just so focused on the details of how I would run. I knew I had a chance to win and just concentrated on shaving every tenth of a second off my time so I could run my best.”
Gilbert will also became the first track and field athlete from Berlin to go on to compete at the Division I Collegiate level. This week he signed his National Letter of Intent to compete at Binghamton of the America East Conference.