Gay goes from apprentice to leader
No. 1-ranked UBC hired runner as team manager to handle inquiries about program
John Gay began his running career three seasons ago with the UBC Thunderbirds knowing that in order to achieve a breakthrough, he would need to be the relentless apprentice.
On Saturday, as he enters the fray as the lead runner on the No. 1-ranked men’s team seeking its first-ever title at the NAIA national championships, it’s safe to say he’s become the harrier with no barrier.
“I didn’t attract a lot of attention from any schools actually reaching out to me, which I understood,” Gay reflected Tuesday in advance of the team’s Thursday departure for the race site in Elsah, Ill., 30 miles north of St. Louis.
“I hadn’t proven myself prior to Grade 12. I was a gamble. I reached out to UBC and they were the ones willing to take a chance.”
Coming out of Kelowna’s Okanagan Mission Secondary, Gay was a distance-running neophyte who was just starting to blossom as a high school senior, taking third at the 2013 B.C. cross-country meet, and second in both the steeplechase and 3,000 metres at the 2014 B.C. high school track championships.
Yet this is a story of a student-athlete embracing every facet of his collegiate environment.
Last spring, as just a second-year performer, he won the steeplechase at the NAIA nationals. Earlier this month on the trails, he finished first at UBC’s conference championship meet.
And with Gay being so organized, passionate and skilled, Laurier Primeau, the head coach of UBC’s cross-country and track and field programs, knew exactly who he wanted to hire as the team’s manager when a budget spike freed up some extra dollars over the off-season.
“He’s been fantastic at taking some things off of my plate, especially with recruiting inquiries,” Primeau said, noting that Gay, 20, and one of UBC’s Stars of the Week, is often the first point of contact for prospective athletes inquiring about the ‘Birds program.
“It’s not uncommon for us to get five emails a day, and if you do the math, that’s over 1,500 a year.
“But it’s partly his fault because the better our team gets, the more interest we get.”
And the major in international studies got a world-class view of his sport this past summer when he got the opportunity to apprentice under The Province’s 2004 Head of the Class honouree Chris Winter, the former North Van-Handsworth and Oregon grad, who in his leadup to qualifying for the Rio Olympics in the steeplechase, needed a regular training partner.
“He was incredibly accommodating, down to earth and humble,” said Gay, who would later race in the same field as Winter at the Canadian trials in Edmonton.
“And he came in the top two and booked his ticket to Rio. To take in that moment, and to think that maybe I might have played just a small part in that, maybe giving him someone to share the pain of a hard workout with, was pretty cool. And it made me think that maybe, one day, it was something that I could do, too.”
Gay wasn’t exactly an idle spectator in the race.
He finished sixth. But ask him and he’ll still call himself the relentless apprentice.