YSU track aiming for title

By Pete Mollica

The Penguins’ program has become a power in the Horizon League.

YOUNGSTOWN — Youngstown State track and field coach Brian Gorby’s best friend might be his Blackberry.

It enables the 15-year coach to keep in touch with his staff, players and over 150 high school standouts he’s recruiting.

Things haven’t always been that easy for the Boardman High and Youngstown State graduate who, in 15 years, has built the Penguins program into a power in the Horizon League.

The Penguins play host to the Horizon League outdoor championships Thursday and Friday and both YSU teams are among the favorites to win titles.

“It’s taken a lot of hard work and building a family-type atmosphere here,” said Gorby about the championship tradition. “That, and surrounding yourself with the right people.”

When Gorby took over the YSU cross country program in 1993 (he was handed the track and field program a year later) the first person he went to talk with was then-YSU football coach Jim Tressel.

“The man was amazing,” Gorby said. “He thought nothing of putting in 100 to 120 hours a week on his program and he was the one who turned me toward the family-type atmosphere, along with his hard work ethic.”

Gorby has no problem putting in 60, 70 or even 80 hours a week.

“But 100 or 120 hours a week just might be a little out of my reach,” he laughed.

Gorby saw the kind of success Tressel had and he wanted that for his program.

The first thing he did was to surround himself with good people. All five of his assistant coaches (none of them are full-time) are YSU graduates and four of them ran for Gorby.

“They are an unbelievable staff, they all have their own responsibilities and handle them to perfection,” he said.

Gorby also knew his teams were only going to be as good as the athletes he brought in, but with a limited number of scholarships and the fact that his coaches all had other jobs forced him to concentrate on local schools.

“They [local athletes] are the foundation of this program,” said Gorby. “Being from the area and having run track in this area helped tremendously in getting some of the area’s top athletes to come here.”

YSU allots just eight full scholarships for men and 14 for women. Gorby is allowed to give partial scholarships, though, which helps.

This season there are 16 men and 14 women from the Valley in the program. Every member of the men’s team, in fact, is an Ohio native, and all but three of the 31 on the women’s team are native Buckeyes.

One of the three women’s standouts not from Ohio is senior weight thrower Bethany Anderson, from Jamestown, N.Y. Last year she was named YSU’s female athlete of the year and was the Horizon League’s indoor track and field athlete of the year.

“We take a lot of pride in what we’ve accomplished over the years and it helps that everybody in the program firmly believes in what we are doing,” he said.

“Coach Tressel always said that success breeds success and that we should always push the positives of every player, never the negatives,” Gorby added.

He anxiously awaits to construction of a planned, on-campus, all-sports facility. The Penguins travel to Kent State for the indoor season.

“Driving back and forth three days a week gets old fast,” he said.

This week’s championships will be the first event the Penguins have hosted in many years.

“We tried one a while back, but the time most teams are available is early April and we hit snow and all kinds of bad weather,” said Gorby, “and bringing in Division II or III teams is not going to help us prepare for the big meets. Plus since I’m the only full-time coach on staff, everything would fall onto my shoulders to get things ready.”

Gorby’s team have won seven Horizon League titles, most recently the women’s indoor title in March. Before that he led the Penguins to eight Mid-Continent Conference titles. He’s been named coach of the year eight times.

“The first title we won was sort of a surprise to us,” he said, “but since that time and with all the hard work we put in, we feel that every year we should be competing for a championship.”

mollica@vindy.com