Central Islip NY Senior Used PVC Pipe And Some Ingenuity To Enter NSAF x AthleticNET Virtual Nationals Hurdles Events

By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor

To start with, there were only two hurdles. 

Franklin Portillo and his father made them out of light-weight plastic tubing — PVC pipe. 

When Franklin was a little bit younger, they had used PVC pipe to frame a small goal and then attached netting to it so that he could practice kicking soccer balls at a target. 

This spring, after the Coronavirus pandemic shut down the track season, the high school senior from Central Islip, N.Y. needed to create a couple of his own hurdles to use for practice. 

"I was excited for the season," Portillo said. "I had been working out over the winter. I was dieting. I was looking forward to a good season. But they weren't letting us on the (local) track at all."

As the weeks dragged and overlapped into a new stay-home order on Long Island, Portillo concocted workouts at home to stay in shape and use his two rudimentary hurdles to practice technique. 

Eventually, the New York State Public High School Athletic Association canceled its spring championships May 1. 

Portillo figured that was the end of it. 

But then, NSAF x AthleticNET Virtual Nationals popped up on his social media feed. 

"I saw the ad for Virtual Nationals and thought, 'Let me go and check this out and see if I could qualify for it,'" Portillo said. 

The school would not loan him hurdles. 

So Portillo decided to work around that problem and build his own. 

With a little bit of guidance from a Youtube tutorial, Portillo set out to make 10 hurdles that he could adjust from 39 inches for the 110-meter high hurdles to 36 inches for the 400-meter intermediates.

The hurdles he came up with enabled Portillo to successfully enter Virtual Nationals. He photographed them, with a tape measure to show the proper height, and sent the pictures to the meet organizers to be verified. 

"Where there is a will, there is a way," Joe Lanzalotto from the NSAF wrote in an email. 

Portillo's ingenuity kept him in the game and gave him a chance to participate in one of the biggest virtual meets of the spring. 

He endured waiting lines to get into his local hardware store. He bought 60 feet of 1-inch PVC pipe and 140 feet of the 3/4-inch pipe, plus an array of connectors and three-way elbow pieces. 

Then he began assembling them with a friend, Justin Suschit. The 3/4-inch tube fits inside the 1-inch tube so that it can slide up to make the barrier taller. He uses clips to hold the smaller tubes in place. 

"We made five of them at first and it took about three hours to get everything together," Portillo said. "The second five, we marked them all out and they came together faster."

The first five hurdles he was able to set up in his backyard so that he could begin training for a virtual time trial. 

It also gave him a chance to see how they worked. 

"The PVC weighs nothing," he said. "The wind comes and blows them over. So we put some thin gravel in the bottom tubes and that weight held them down better."

When the day came to put the hurdles into action — for a virtual run through the 110-meter and 400-meter events — Portillo and his friend loaded them into the vehicle and drove them to a nearby school with an open track. Then they carried them from the parking lot to the track and set them up. 

"There were definitely some people who looked at us," Portillo said. "No one comes to the track with their own hurdles."

Portillo ran well enough over them to record times in the qualifying round and should be able to use his hurdles once again in the virtual finals, which are June 13-19. 

After that, Portillo will keep the hurdles as training tools or pass them on to someone who needs them. 

He plans to enroll in a program to become a Licensed Practical Nurse, then work a summer job and begin applying for colleges. 

"From a young age I've wanted to become a doctor," Portillo said. "My uncle is a nursing manager. And I like what he does, because nurses are the ones who are there caring for the patients. That's what I want to do."

The Coronavirus pandemic, which has ravaged medical professionals in New York and around the country, has only strengthened Portillo's resolve to join their ranks.

"It motivates me even more," he said. "These people are seen as heroes. They are finally being given the recognition that they deserve."