Track Star Boylan-Pett Leads Lions to Success in Multiple Events

As senior co-captain Liam Boylan-Pett toed up at the Penn Relays Championship of America 4x800-meter relay heat, he awaited his handoff from freshman Jeff Moriarty with what could only be trepidation. The Lions were the returning champions of the historic race, having defeated Michigan by a slim margin and taken home a championship-level title for the first time since 1938. Now, instead of legendary runner Erison Hurtault, CC ’07, it was Moriarty approaching Boylan-Pett, with the Lions in third behind LSU and Texas. Boylan-Pett had his work cut out for him.

“I was more nervous than I’ve ever been in my life,” Boylan-Pett said of the Penn Relays race. “For once, all eyes were on Columbia. We were expected to do something.”

Although the Lions placed third, Boylan-Pett anchored the final 800 meters of the race with an astounding 1:49.1, edging past his time from last year. He almost gave up Columbia’s bronze medal by falling behind Andrew Dawson of Tennessee, but fought in the last 150 meters of the race for a spot in the top three.

“We all ran our butts off,” he said. “Every one of us competed, and that’s all you can ask for. You have to show up the day of the race—you can run fast in practice all you want, but if you don’t show up on the day of, it just doesn’t matter.”

Boylan-Pett has a history of delivering standout performances come race day. He currently holds the school record in the 800-meter race in outdoor track and ran the third-fastest time in Columbia history in the 1,500-meter event. As a junior,

Boylan-Pett finished 26th at NCAA Championships in the 800-meter race last outdoor season and took second in the Heptagonal Championships 1,500-meter contest. Even while living in the small town of Bath, Mich., Boylan-Pett managed to win seven state championships, earn All-American honors in the 800-meter, and graduate valedictorian of his high school class.

Yet Boylan-Pett’s ambition is often masked by an easygoing attitude toward some aspects of his collegiate career. While he states that he is no longer worried by drinking an occasional soda or getting less than 10 hours of sleep once in a while, he still drank from a one-liter bottle of Poland Spring throughout his interview. Balancing his sociology major with his athletic schedule, he said, is a non-issue.

“I try to be as unstressed with my entire life as possible,” he said. “Because I have this schedule, I know I need to finish something by a certain point. I give an A+ effort on pretty much... well, not everything, but I give a hard effort. If it means I’m going to get a B on my paper instead of a A, time doesn’t allow for everything. I just try to get stuff done and do the best that I can in the time that I have.”

But Boylan-Pett maintains that he takes a businesslike approach to his training. “Easy days are a totally different story, because you can talk and it’s a social time for us,” he said. “But on the day of workouts, I have my headphones on the bus. Those are pretty important days that make us ready for the race days.”

Even the senior’s relationship with head coach Willy Wood has evolved into one that is focused on Boylan-Pett’s growth as a runner. “I struggled my first two years—I was injured my freshman year for outdoor track, which is my strongest sport, and I was injured for cross country of my sophomore year. During outdoor track, I finally clicked. Coach Wood and I started something, and now I do whatever he says.”

Wood has indeed shaped the senior’s development, and his invitation to Boylan-Pett during his high school years to join the Columbia track team was based on a promise that the runner would excel. Boylan-Pett’s older brother Will was a junior on the Light Blue team during Boylan-Pett’s senior year of high school, and as he was fielding offers from powerhouses Georgetown and Stanford, an offer from Wood changed everything.
“I visited Will,” Boylan-Pett said. “And Coach Wood was always like, ‘You know you can come here, we want you on the team.’ He didn’t really have much to sell to me, but he sent me an e-mail that said if you do come here, you will be a national caliber runner. Hearing that from him was a big boost for me.”

Boylan-Pett certainly ascended to a high level of running during his time at Columbia, and with him rose the mid-distance squad that has become the core of the Lions’ track program. Currently, the Light Blue men’s squad has six athletes running under 1:52 in the 800-meter race, making them tough contenders in the collegiate running world. Schools like Villanova and Georgetown, Boylan-Pett said, cannot stand up to the force of Columbia’s runners.

“We think we’re faster than they are,” he said. “And I think we’ve shown that by beating them in the 4x800 the past two years.”

But while Boylan-Pett and his squad have capitalized on their potential, their team continues to place fifth or sixth within the Ivy League. Schools like Cornell and Princeton manage to develop their field-event programs, components the Lions have yet to truly develop, and the Light Blue—while boasting a few outstanding sprinters—are not yet a powerhouse in that area.

“Part of it is just that we don’t have the numbers,” he said. “Cornell is different because they have so many people that can go to that school. Columbia still isn’t the big school for a track athletes—you wouldn’t think that you can run in New York City.”

“But the hope is that you get one group running well, and then you can get the rest of the team. It’s contagious, and it spreads. It’s taken three years to build the mid-distance group. At first it was one or two guys, and now it’s 10 guys in the 800-1,500-meter group that are good. We may not be a full team, but we try and beat people in the events we run people in. If you take out the events we don’t have people for, we’re in the mix.”

Next year, however, Boylan-Pett will be running as a Hoya at Georgetown. Because the Ivy League does not allow red-shirted athletes to spend their fifth years with a Heptagonal school, Boylan-Pett must race with a Georgetown uniform in order to make up for his two semesters of injury during his freshman and sophomore years. He will be joining Chris Miltenberg, who currently serves as assistant coach of the Hoya team after working for three years as assistant coach at Columbia for the middle-distance and distance athletes. Boylan-Pett will be pursuing a masters degree in “hopefully just running fast.”

“I don’t feel bad going there,” he said “But I’m a Columbia runner, and I always will be. It’s just going to happen to be that I have a Georgetown uniform there. Everybody on the team knows that I would be at Columbia if I could be, so they’re not going to have anything against me.”

According to Boylan-Pett, the Lions can expect a strong recruiting class of 2012 to fill his spot and those of seniors Jonah Rathbun and Zach Richard. In addition, he believes that freshman Jeff Moriarty will continue to excel past his freshman year.

“People see what we did at Penn, and Coach Wood has gotten some really good kids to come here,” he said. “I’m just glad that 10 years from now, I’ll be able to come back to Columbia, and they’re still going to be good at track.”