‘A fun ride’ for Mastromonaco
Hockey player ices top honors with top-5 finish at states
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” — Yogi Berra
Gio Mastromonaco, about 18 months ago as a sophomore at Nazareth, came across his own “fork in the road.”
He took it and he ran with it. Literally.
Mastromonaco was primarily an ice hockey player for a Lehigh Valley Phantoms youth program (and a pretty good goal-scorer) who moonlighted as a distance runner on coach Ken Rolek’s Blue Eagles’ track and field team.
Rolek, a longtime coach, recalled he saw some untapped potential in Mastromonaco and approached him with a proposition.
“I was like man, this kid is very talented,” Rolek said, “but he still wasn’t sold on cross country. I knew hockey was his first love. So I took the approach with him to look at it like fall track season. He signed up for cross country but was not running much at all in the summer of his junior year. And I worked around his hockey schedule.”
“I was really into hockey,” said Mastromonaco, who still plays for the Phantoms’ 18-under team. “I agreed to run cross country when Coach Ken asked me to but I was doing it to stay in shape for track and field.”
Not only would Rolek’s instincts be proven correct, but Mastromonaco’s decision to run cross country at Nazareth unknowingly changed the course of his life.
Mastromonaco, in less than two years, has transformed himself into one of Pennsylvania’s top distance runners and The Morning Call’s All-Area boys runner of the year.
The standout senior claimed two Eastern Pennsylvania Conference titles, a District 11 Class 3A crown and a fifthplace medal at this fall’s PIAA state meet. He expects to accept an athletic scholarship to Penn State University if all goes well during his official visit in January.
Besides discovering his distance dominance, Mastromonaco also unearthed the professional path he now plans to pursue. And that is thanks to a lower-leg injury he suffered during his junior season of cross country.
“I guess I’ve never really thought about how my decision
to go out for cross country changed my life,” Mastromonaco said, “but it definitely did. Penn State is my dream school and cross country gave me, maybe, a chance to go to college there. Then, when I broke my leg and I was going through the rehab, it made me want to study health sciences and become a physical therapist.”
Rolek, as a teenage runner, authored a similar story – one he still shares with all of his athletes.
“I always talk to my teams about running at the college level,” he said, “and how the sport changed my life. I went out for cross country to get in shape for basketball. All because I went out for cross country in high school, that is why I am here today.”
Mastromonaco, due to his determination and natural talent, was a quick study.
Rolek said several days into last year’s preseason practices, Mastromonaco already was running up front of the Blue Eagles’ elite performers (and Nazareth won the District 11 3A team title the year before he joined the team). After finishing among the top five at his first couple of races, Mastromonaco never lost in an EPC meet.
“Gio is one of those kids if you tell him he has limits,” Rolek said, “he will work to prove you wrong. I said you’re a top-25 kid in the state, for sure. He was like, ‘Well, I can do better than that.’
“When [Parkland’s Paul Abeln] beat him at Lehigh [the Paul Short Run], that didn’t sit well with Gio. I told him the
goal was to run fast, not beat one person. So, he was determined not to lose to him again. He kept gaining confidence running so strong at DeSales.”
Mastromonaco started his postseason with wins in the EPC and District 11 championships at DeSales. But, the best race of his life (to date) came at states.
Running for the first time on the Parkview Course in Hershey, at the PIAA championships, a confident Mastromonaco exceeded even his expectations. He finished fifth overall among Class 3A boys in 16 minutes, 5 seconds. Soon after his state performance, Mastromonaco said, he heard from Penn State.
“I was thinking top 25 if I had a good race, top 10 if I had an amazing race,” said Mastromonaco, who carries a 3.7 gradepoint average at Nazareth. “The top five was not anywhere in my mind. I was real relaxed that race, no stress. And there are a lot of hills on that course and I love hills. My whole senior season was a blast.”
Now, the son of Jason and Mary Mastromonaco is just enjoying the ice hockey season while working out with Nazareth’s winter (indoor) track team. He said he has some goals in mind for the spring (outdoor) track season but hasn’t really thought about his college career yet.
Surely, though, his path in life has taken a sharp turn in the two years since he decided to run cross country.
“I’ve fallen in love with the sport,” Mastromonaco said. “It’s been a fun ride, for sure.”