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Prophecy to Podium: La Salle's Long Run To State Title

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DyeStat.com   Nov 10th 2017, 5:30pm
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Prophecy to Podium:

La Salle’s Long Run to the State Title

 

By Dave Devine for DyeStat

  

There was no stopwatch running.

When it comes to the state championship meet, La Salle College High coach Greg Bielecki doesn’t bother with taking splits or scribbling times. 

He’s too busy counting heads and squinting at singlets. 

At the 2017 Pennsylvania State Meet, Bielecki was stationed Nov. 4 at a familiar vantage near the bottom of the final hill, about 250 meters from the finish line. 

His top guy, senior Evan Addison, streamed past in 10th place, looking solid. The low stick the Philadelphia area school needed to open its scoring. The next three were positioned well, too, but once that trio angled toward the hill, it became difficult to track individual runners in the dense crush of the pack. 

“At that point,” Bielecki said, “there were just so many guys…” 

He wasn’t simply scanning the throng for the distinctive gold jerseys of his own team, he was attempting to pick out the best of La Salle’s opponents. 

In particular, defending state champion Council Rock North. 

“Their top three guys came by me,” Bielecki said, “and I think their third man was in 18th, and honestly I didn’t have a great feeling at that point.” 

Completing what he later termed “a super-fast, back-of-the-envelope calculation” as he made his own ascent toward the finish area, Bielecki came up with a rough score of 110 for his charges. 

That provided some hope. 

“I was assuming we’d gotten second,” he said, “but after the calculation — well, I didn’t think (Council Rock North) could score under 100 points with the way their five guys were spaced out.” 

As he neared his recovering runners, Bielecki entertained a single thought: We actually have a shot at this.  

But before he could even reach the team, his brief reverie was interrupted by the meet’s loud speakers: 

Will the coaches from La Salle and Council Rock North please come to the timing tent? 

Bielecki thought that sounded promising, but also possibly concerning. 

Inside the tent, a stone-faced official regarded both coaches and stated, plainly, “Well, it’s a tie.” 

“Oddly enough,” Bielecki recalled, “my initial reaction was, ‘Awesome. We just won.’ Because I knew that if it was tied, we’d won.” 

The coach was certain his sixth man — the deciding factor in a tied Pennsylvania state championship race — had finished ahead of Council Rock North’s sixth harrier. In fact, La Salle had placed its entire seven ahead of its rival’s number five. 

However,” Bielecki continued, “his next line was, ‘We now need to go through the video to make sure the chips match everybody’s torso.’ And at that point I knew we could have, potentially, three…four…five places change.” 

If even a single place shifted in favor of Council Rock North, La Salle would find itself runner-up at a state meet that the storied Philly program — for all of its estimable accolades —  had never won. 

 

Pins and needles in Portland

 

Two-thousand, eight hundred miles away, on a couch in a neat bungalow in Portland, Ore., a 73-year-old retired coach was hanging on every update broadcast from his former Pennsylvania home. 

Pat Devine, La Salle’s track and cross country coach for 39 years before retiring to Portland in 2010 with his wife, Patricia, began his Saturday by figuring out what time his former team toed the line in Hershey, making the necessary conversions to West Coast time, and then settling in with his iPhone and iPad to follow the action. 

“I saw the beginning — a clip of a short video on a website,” he said later, “but nothing after that.” 

Devine has continued to follow the team closely in retirement, but his interest in this race went beyond simple nostalgia. 

Earlier in the fall, on the way back from a trip to Ireland, Devine and his wife had scheduled additional days in Philadelphia to visit with family and friends. 

On a free Friday afternoon, he paid a visit to the all-boys high school where he’d served as a teacher, coach and guidance counselor for four decades. After making the rounds of classrooms and offices, he ambled down a familiar tree-lined driveway to a six-lane track that — following an extensive 2018 renovation — will be renamed in his honor. 

After introductions and some words of wisdom from the visiting coach, Devine’s former assistant, Bielecki, handed his old boss the most valuable gift he could have offered the retired trackman on a warm September afternoon — a stopwatch and a junior varsity group to mentor through a round of repeats on the track. 

“They allowed me to feel like part of the team,” Devine said. “They made me part of the team. Asked me to talk, introduced themselves, thanked me for coming…I got to meet a lot of the young kids on the team — the kids that went to State — and they certainly impressed me with the work they were doing.” 

Across the country, and eight seasons after retiring, Devine continues to research and record the weekly marks and personal bests of the current La Salle runners in a marble composition notebook, jotted in a hand familiar to generations of Explorers who scoured his bulletin board postings for workouts and results. 

“I’ve left La Salle,” he acknowledged, “but La Salle has not left me. Not in terms of coaching and following the kids.” 

Back in that Portland bungalow, Devine finally received the news he was awaiting in the form of a text from his son, Brian: 

Early reports are LaSalle and CR North tied for AAA boys win, 130 to 130. Waiting on confirmation… 

“That’s when I knew they were either going to be first or second,” Devine said. “The biggest thing then was just waiting.” 

Like his protégé Bielecki, Devine had confidence in the pack compression behind frontrunner Addison. La Salle has long cultivated a commitment to whisper-thin separations, often posting 1-5 spreads well south of 30 seconds. 

But he was also keenly aware of the stakes in the video review. 

“When they go to the video,” he said, “and they make sure every place is exactly right — 1,2,3… right down the line — you go, ‘Oh man, if somewhere the counting was off by a single person…’” 

 

A long wait for the Catholic League

 

There’s an exceptionally short strand of DNA connecting the last 50 years of La Salle coaching lineage. 

Tom Donnelly, one of the greatest La Salle runners of all time, spent the early 1970s at his alma mater before accepting a job at Haverford College and handing over the reins to his then-assistant, Devine, in 1973. 

Devine carved out his own legacy, and in 1999, sent one of his most promising harriers, Bielecki, off to Haverford, where Bielecki became a Division 3 All-American running for Donnelly (at that point, already a Hall of Fame coach at the school). 

After matriculating from Haverford in 2003, Bielecki returned to La Salle through a post-graduate program called the La Sallian Volunteers. At the end of the year — with strong support from Devine — he was offered a full-time social studies position and assistant coaching role. 

In 2008, sensing his own impending retirement, Devine asked Bielecki to assume the mantle of head coach and reduced his own role to assistant, before stepping away completely in the summer of 2010. 

Three coaches, from the late 1960s until 2017, and for most of those years La Salle — along with every other high school in the Philadelphia Catholic League — was unable to compete for a state cross country title. 

The Catholic League, along with the Philadelphia Public League, had long been external to the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA), which meant those schools could not compete in state championship tournaments coordinated by Pennsylvania’s governing body for scholastic athletics. 

In 2007, after years of negotiation and planning, the Public League finally joined the PIAA in a newly-created District 12. The Catholic League followed a year later, consolidated into the same district as its public counterparts. 

Many longtime opponents of inclusion for the Philadelphia league schools expressed concern that state titles would immediately begin siphoning toward the dominant city in the east. 

In cross country, at least, that fear proved largely unfounded. 

Up to 2017, La Salle and league rival Cardinal O’Hara had both come close, but neither had claimed the coveted trophy. 

In the fall of 2008, with La Salle finally eligible for its first attempt at a state title, the Explorers employed a stingy 24-second spread to upset the form charts and finish second to District 1 power North Penn. 

Devine, who’d waited 35 seasons for a chance to lead his team against the state’s best, had to wait another year. He needed emergency gallbladder surgery three days before the meet, and handed off the van keys to his young assistant — Bielecki. 

“Come Friday night,” Devine recalled, “I realized I just couldn’t make that drive out to Hershey. It would be too much of a risk, interfering with healing from the surgery. I called Greg and said, ‘I’m out, you’re the head coach.’” 

For Bielecki, that state championship marked the first high school cross country meet he’d ever attended — as an athlete or coach — without his longtime mentor. 

“All day long,” he said, “I kept looking around for him, to chat with him, talk things over, and he wasn’t there. I did not realize, in the moment, how many things went right for us that day.” 

A year later, with Devine back at the helm, La Salle made the podium again — third place with a jaw-dropping 15-second spread from first to fifth man. 

The following season, with Devine now retired and following for the first time from Portland, the Explorers came home a disappointed 10th. 

Bielecki was stunned. 

“Driving home that year,” he recalled, “I had a long conversation with the windshield, wondering what happened.” 

He realized he needed to improve his knowledge base, his attention to detail, his focus on all aspects of racing — physical, emotional and mental. 

“I really felt lost that year,” he acknowledges now. “That was a really hard year.” 

For his part, Devine never doubted his former pupil was the right person to assume the mantle at La Salle. 

“I was very fortunate that Greg had the interest and the desire to become assistant coach, and then in 2009, to become the head coach,” Devine said. “He’s taken over the program and reached another level. He’s just a great coach.” 

 

Promise shown at Prophecy

 

There were two moments in early autumn when Bielecki began to suspect that this La Salle team had the potential to claim the school’s first state title. 

The first inkling came the day he climbed into the team van at the end of the annual Briarwood summer camp, glanced in the rearview mirror at his varsity group, and realized that the mix of guys staring back — the personalities, the leadership qualities, the balance of goofiness and seriousness, the assured upperclass presence and the gutty, talented sophomores — pointed to something special. 

“It just felt like the right mix.” 

The second indication came from a pair of workouts bookended around a non-race weekend in late September. 

With a big invitational one week away, the Explorers hit the track for 800s and 400s on limited rest, finishing with a fast 800. 

“Those guys,” Bielecki said, “they ripped that 800. And they looked good; they were fired up.” 

By coincidence, it happened to be the workout Devine attended on his layover from the Ireland trip. Even clicking off splits for the JV group, he couldn’t help notice the talent on display from the varsity. 

“The way they handled the workout,” he recalled, “the way they attacked that thing…showed the mental toughness they had, the confidence they were gaining in themselves.” 

The poise and passion reminded the old coach of the best teams he’d ever mentored. 

Three days later, on a blistering Monday at the team’s training ground at Prophecy Creek Park, Bielecki was having similar thoughts. 

He dispatched his squad on a tough workout — five times 1-kilometer with one-and-a-half-minute rest — and walked away shaking his head during the cooldown. 

“They grinded through at race pace and looked…really good.” 

Back at La Salle, the typically reserved coach finally showed his cards to one of the assistants. 

“We got back from Prophecy, I looked at Coach (Tom) Devlin, and I said to him, ‘We can be state champions.’ There was zero doubt left in my mind at that moment.” 

 

Down to the sixth man

  

Six weeks later, with the video review dragging on in the timer’s tent, there was plenty of doubt. 

Bielecki remained in the tent for the duration, calling Devlin to notify him of the situation and request that he update the squad. 

Out in the team area, the varsity seven and their supporters agonized through the delay. 

Addison, the senior leader who ended up 11th overall, recalled that in 2012, fellow Catholic Leaguers Cardinal O’Hara — a squad that ended up qualifying for Nike Cross Nationals that season — had lost on a tiebreaker in the AAA race. 

He was hoping his crew wouldn’t follow suit. 

“I knew that if it stayed tied, we would win,” Addison said, “but it was pretty nerve-wracking, that whole 30 minutes waiting for the announcement.” 

Nearby, sophomore teammate Vince Twomey was mulling his own thoughts. 

Often the number two man on a close-knit, fluid squad, Twomey had struggled at Hershey and crossed as the Explorers’ sixth runner. A key position in this tied race, but not the finish he was expecting. 

“As the race was slipping away from me,” Twomey said later, “with more and more kids passing, I couldn’t hang or pass anyone back, I just kept trying to hold my position.” 

Arms listless, stomach in pain, the sophomore spent the waning kilometers focused on the team objective. 

“I just kept thinking about the team. I knew I had to keep working for them.” 

He powered home in 82nd (scoring 44), 10 spots and a mere two seconds behind La Salle’s No. 5. Even more importantly, he was 108 places ahead of Council Rock North’s sixth man. 

“When I found out it was tied,” Twomey said, “I knew we would win with me as the sixth man if it stayed that way. So that was a good feeling.” 

Back in the tent, Bielecki spotted the meet official who’d broken the original news, finally emerging from the review area. 

The official walked directly to the La Salle coach and stated, in the same even tone, “No change.” 

Bielecki needed something more definitive. 

“I put my hand on his shoulders and I was like, ‘So we won, right?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, you won.’ It was amazing, but a pretty anticlimactic way to find out you won a state championship.” 

When word reached the gathered La Salle fans and runners, a raucous celebration erupted from the huddle. 

“Everyone was just going wild,” Twomey said, “jumping around and yelling — a really happy moment.” 

For Addison, who’d had a difficult 2016 state race, the moment was especially cathartic. 

“It was a long buildup to that point.” he said, “All season, we felt like we could do something like that, but it’s one thing to talk about it and another to actually do it.” 

Out in Portland, with the final result tweeted out, emotion overtook Devine as well. 

“It was something we’d been aiming for since 2008.” 

Much longer, if you factor in all the years Catholic League schools were ineligible to compete for the title. 

Days later, Devine was still thinking of all the shoulders the young La Salle runners had stood upon at that 2017 state meet. 

“The coaches in the Catholic League, we were very close,” he said. “We wanted to beat each other — otherwise, why coach? — but it’s a family of coaches that supports each other and helps each other. And there have been some great teams, outside of La Salle and O’Hara, that never had the opportunity to race for that state title. So, it’s an honor that La Salle was first to do it.” 

Bielecki, so closely connected to his predecessors at La Salle, shares the sense of history. 

“We talk a lot,” he said, “with everybody on the team, all the time, about the idea that it needs to mean a lot when you put on that jersey that says LA SALLE on the front…that jersey has been worn a long time by a lot of people who have done a lot of great things. We always try to do our part to uphold that name, and move it forward.” 

On the first Saturday of November, by the slimmest of margins, his team did far more than move the name forward. 

They elevated it to top of the state podium for the first time in school history. 

--- 

 Editorial Note: Full disclosure, the author is a graduate of La Salle High School and son of one of La Salle’s former coaches.



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