Off to the laces

Hard work, mismatched shoestrings Gorham's recipe for success

Imagine an athlete getting ready to compete in an event, and all of the sudden his shoelace breaks. He panics and then finds a black shoelace in his bag. He replaces it and now has one black and one white shoelace.

This is what happened to John Gorham, a Penn State track athlete.

Gorham admitted he always wears black socks along with one black and one white shoelace in both sneakers.

Whatever Gorham is doing, don't expect him to change it, because he is off to an excellent start in the indoor season. He already has three first-place finishes under his belt, two in the long jump and one in the triple jump. One of those finishes came last weekend at the Bucknell-Hershey Relays at Bucknell University.

Gorham out-jumped the rest of the competition with a mark of 25 feet. With that jump, he broke the field house and relay records, and was named the Outstanding Field Athlete of the meet. That mark also qualified him for the NCAA national meet held in March.

All of his early season success is being carried over from the outdoor season, when Gorham made it to nationals in the long jump and was named an All-American.

"After last year's (outdoor) nationals, I took a break," he said. "In the summer I did a lot of hard training at home."

Gorham grew up in Kingston and graduated from Wyoming Valley West High School. He said he decided to take up track in seventh grade because of his speed.

"I thought I was fast when I was young," Gorham said, "so in seventh grade I tried out and started doing the long and triple jump."

He must not have been the only one to think he was fast, because Penn State recruited Gorham his senior year.

He said he decided to come to Penn State because it was a big school with good academics and it is close to home. Penn State coach Harry Groves said he is happy to have Gorham on his squad.

"He has one good work ethic," Groves said. "Competitively, he is even better. He puts his money where his mouth is."

Gorham said he also credits his success to his jumping coach, Andrew Hardyk. During his first season, Hardyk changed Gorham's whole jumping technique and told him it would be for the best.

"I totally trust him," Gorham said about Hardyk. "After changing my style I did bad at first, but then it started to pay off."

Hardyk is a former track captain at Cincinnati, where he competed in the long jump and sprints. He said Gorham has a lot of talent.

"He is one of the best in the country," Hardyk said. "He has been at nationals and was named an All-American."

He said there are three types of jumping styles in track -- one is called the sail technique, which is what an average jumper would use. Second is a hang technique, which is what Gorham used before he came to Penn State. The third technique is the hitch kick, which is what Hardyk drilled into Gorham. This technique is used by a lot of the top jumpers, Hardyk said.

"We started from square one and now he is darn good at it," Hardyk said. "His freshman year he was jumping 24-7 and placed fourth at the Big Ten meet."

Hardyk said he would like to see Gorham qualify for nationals in the indoor and outdoor seasons. He added the Big Ten Championship is going to be a good test, because if he places high there he can place high at nationals.

Gorham said if he gets a mark of 25-6 in the long jump, he would definitely qualify for NCAAs and hopes to qualify for U.S. Nationals.

So don't plan on seeing him changing his shoelaces anytime soon.