Troy Reeder \u201917 \u201cdidn\u2019t want to go out there and lay an egg\u201d at the NCAA Track and Field Outdoor Championships earlier this month at the University of Oregon\u2019s legendary Heyward Field. That would have been possible without obliterating the Furman record in the 3,000-meter steeplechase on his way to becoming the University\u2019s second All-American in the sport and potentially qualifying for the Olympic Trials, but better safe than sorry.<\/p>\n
In what could be described as the exact opposite of laying an egg, Reeder ran a blazing 8:36.51 to earn a spot in the men\u2019s final two days later. No men\u2019s track final at the NCAA Outdoor Championships had ever featured an athlete wearing a Furman uniform until the evening of June 10, and in the biggest race of his life Reeder came up huge again with a seventh-place finish that validated coach Robert Gary\u2019s belief in the junior from Fishers, Ind., and put a cap on arguably the most impressive season by the University\u2019s athletic program ever.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year, Coach Gary said\u00a0that he wanted me\u00a0on the starting line of the NCAA final next year,\u201d Reeder said. \u201cAnd I was thinking about that going into the race, what he told me a year ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
The top eight finishers out of 13 were named first-team All-Americans. A day later, Allie Buchalski \u201917 finished 14th<\/sup> in the 5,000-meter run with a time of 16:22.64 to earn second-team All-American honors, becoming the first Furman woman to accomplish the feat. She reached the finals after setting a Paladin record with a time of 16:08.10 in the East Preliminaries.<\/p>\n \u201cWe thought Troy was going to be a pretty special athlete. He did a lot of things in practice that got us really excited,\u201d Gary said. \u201cHe never quite put it together in a race, but we thought that this year (he would).\u201d<\/p>\n Eugene, Ore., has earned the moniker TrackTown USA, and Heyward Field has attained reverential status in the sport. Competing there is akin to a baseball player taking the field at Yankee Stadium, and Reeder said the experience, even before his outstanding performance, lived up to its reputation.<\/p>\n \u201cThey take you out and walk you around at the start of the steeplechase. I couldn\u2019t stop smiling it was so awesome,\u201d he said. \u201cThe crowd was great, and being in that stadium, knowing how many great runners had run on that track, to line up with the best kids and prove yourself, was pretty sweet. It was a lot of fun. I really love Heyward. It was everything people said it was.\u201d<\/p>\n Reeder came to Furman with a state championship in the 1,600-meter run on his resume, but Gary saw quickly he had the athleticism and temperament to excel in one of track\u2019s most unusual and grueling events. Reeder had never tried a steeplechase, and clearing a three-foot-high wooden barrier 35 times, including seven with a pit of water on the other side, over seven-and-a-half laps isn\u2019t for the faint of heart.<\/p>\n Setting the Furman record in the 3,000-meter run during the 2014-15 indoor track season prompted Reeder to give the steeplechase a serious look, however, especially coupled with the fact that Gary was a two-time U.S. Olympian (1996, 2004) and two-time World Championships qualifier (1996, 2003) in the event.<\/p>\n \u201cHe always pushes the steeplechase. That\u2019s his baby,\u201d Reeder said. \u201cAnd after I ran a pretty good 3K, I thought, you know what? Maybe we should give it a shot.\u201d<\/p>\n Reeder took a redshirt during the 2015 outdoor season to learn the event, which gave him time to work with Gary as well as assistant coaches Cory Leslie and Craig Forys, who are both active steeplechasers themselves with Olympic ambitions.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never had to jump over anything in a race, and you can imagine having to run hard and then coming up on a barrier. There\u2019s a lot of technique involved in it, making sure you get over the hurdle efficiently, and Coach Gary really pushes that on us,\u201d Reeder said. \u201cIf you looked at my hurdling last year to this year, it\u2019s greatly improved. That\u2019s probably the toughest thing about it. You\u2019ve got to be so efficient over the hurdles so when it comes late in the race you haven\u2019t wasted all this energy barely jumping over a hurdle back in lap three.\u201d<\/p>\n Reeder\u2019s time in the semifinals (he ran an 8:42 in the final) didn\u2019t just break the school record set by Tripp Hurt \u201915 by five seconds; it also briefly qualified him for the Olympic Trials, which will be held July 1\u201310 at Heyward. Now, however, his hopes rest on bettering his personal best Thursday at the Stumptown Twilight meet in Gresham, Ore.<\/p>\n A time of 8:32 is necessary to automatically make the Trials field, but the field must be at least 24 runners meaning the top 24 times qualify even if slower than 8:32. Thirteen athletes have met the automatic mark\u2014including both Leslie (8:19.12) and Forys (8:27.19)\u2014and Reeder\u2019s 8:36 had him in the race until several faster times run over the weekend dropped him down to 26th<\/sup>, less than a second from the cutoff.<\/p>\n He must run at least an 8:35.58 on Thursday to earn a return trip to TrackTown.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s so close right now. If you run like two seconds faster you can hop eight or 10 guys,\u201d Reeder said. \u201cIt\u2019s crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n If Reeder, a communication studies major, makes the field it would mark another first: It\u2019s believed no Furman undergraduate has ever competed in the U.S. Olympic Trials, though David Segal \u201963, a 2008 inductee into the Furman Athletic Hall of Fame, competed in the 1956 and 1960 Olympics for his native England.<\/p>\n Records of the NCAA Outdoor Championships only go back to 1965, but since that time no Paladin, male or female, had ever competed in a track event until Hurt finished 20th<\/sup> in the steeplechase in 2014. In 2015 Hurt was joined by Sinead Haughey \u201915 in the 10,000-meter run.<\/p>\n Kim Piersol \u201969, a 1983 HOF inductee who still holds the school record in the triple jump with a leap of 51 feet, 7 inches, was an All-American in the event in 1968, when he finished third nationally. He finished fourth in 1969, but at the time only the top three were awarded All-America honors.<\/p>\n Beginning with five Southern Conference team championships and five trips to the NCAA tournament in the fall alone, Furman enjoyed a banner athletic season. In all, the Paladins won six league tournaments\u2014in men\u2019s and women\u2019s soccer and cross country, volleyball and women\u2019s golf\u2014and a regular-season SoCon title in women\u2019s tennis.<\/p>\n Additionally, eight athletes were named conference Players of the Year in their respective sports, and four coaches earned Coach of the Year honors.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody\u2019s winning SoCon titles this year,\u201d Gary said. \u201cWe\u2019re having some NCAA representation by a lot of sports, so it\u2019s a great time and nice to be a part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Troy Reeder \u201917 \u201cdidn\u2019t want to go out there and lay an egg\u201d at the NCAA Track and Field Outdoor Championships earlier this month at the University of Oregon\u2019s legendary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":4615,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,51,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-communication-studies","category-top-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}