Competitiveness force behind Gallo’s career

By tim morris


Lindsey Gallo Lindsey Gallo

IIn her senior class paper, Lindsey Gallo took a quote from one of America’s greatest distance runners, Steve Prefontaine.

"To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the Gift" is what the 1972 Olympic 5,000-meter finalist would tell young runners.

It’s something that Gallo could very easily say about her own brilliant high school running career.

Long after she has raced her final mile, Gallo will be able to look back on a high school career in which she accomplished all that there was to achieve and know she did not sacrifice the gift. She was a record-setter, a state champion and an All-American. From her first tentative steps as a freshman to the final race of her career, a sixth place in the mile at the national high school championships, which earned her All-American recognition, she never left anything on the track. She ran to win with an unsurpassed will.

For all that she did in 1999-00 and throughout her unparalleled career, Gallo is the News Transcript’s 2000 Female Athlete of the Year.

"I did so much more than I dreamed of," said Gallo, looking back on her scholastic career. "I didn’t think that I was that good of a runner. There were no big expectations when I went to high school."

But there sure were after she captured the Freehold District cross country championship as a freshman. Everyone took notice of the lithe Rebel who liked to run from the front.

"I didn’t think I would be the best runner on the team yet alone win the District and be one of the best in the county," she said of her freshman year on the cross country team.

From that early success, Gallo would forge the finest girls’ running career in District history. To do that, she combined her natural gifts with a tremendous drive and determination to succeed.

"I’m competitive at everything I do," she explained. "I’m a perfectionist. I want to do my best in everything. I’m a very focused person. When I set a goal, I want to achieve it."

That’s why Gallo was always able to bounce back from the few disappointments she experienced during her career. She was not about to let adversity win.

"I always gave my best – that was my motivation," she remarked. "I never like to end things on a bad note. If I have a bad race, I’m able to put it behind me and look ahead to giving my best in the next one."

Howell’s outdoor track and field coach Harry Neill can attest to his student’s perfectionism.

"She was tremendously focused and intense as well as very confident and mentally tough," he pointed out. "She’s extremely goal-oriented and extremely competitive in everything.

"I had her in my physics class and she had the same intensity there," he added. "If she got a 95 on a test, she was going to question you about the other 5 percent and make her case. You had to be on the top of your game."

The top of Gallo’s game is to be the best.

"Winning was so important to her," Neill explained. "She wanted to be the best."

For Neill, it was a pair of races that Gallo didn’t win this year that showed just what kind of competitor she is. At the Meet of Champions Gallo decided to go head to head against national champion Erin Donohue of Haddonfield in both the 1,600 and 3,200. She could have skipped the 1,600 and run the 3,200 fresh. But, she didn’t want to appear to be ducking anyone and opted instead to accept the challenge of battling her twice.

"Lindsey never backed down from anyone," he pointed out. "She hammered it out with Donohue in both races. It took a lot of guts for her to do that. But she knew if she wanted to be measured as a good runner, she had to do it."

By any measuring stick, Gallo was a great high school runner. She has the medals, titles and records that go along with being the best. She is the Shore Conference record holder for the 1,600 meters (4:52.65) outdoors and indoor mile (4:59.60). She is the Freehold District holder in those events plus the 800 (2:16.51) and the 3,200 (10:41.6).

Titles. Gallo has plenty. She was the 1998 Meet of Champions winner at 1,600 meters. She won the Group IV state championships at 1,600 twice (1998 & ’00) and 3,200 (2000) in outdoor track and in cross country and indoors this March, won the Eastern States mile.

Being among the nation’s best brings with it a great deal of satisfaction.

"It’s a great feeling," noted Gallo. "After taking sixth in the nationals I said to myself that there are only five runners in the country better than me. It’s an amazing feeling. I remember after winning the state championship in the 1,600, going to New York and passing through all the towns on the way there thinking I can beat anyone in this town. I have such amazing memories from high school."

If there is something that both Gallo and Neill are proudest of it’s that Gallo got faster every year and always peaked at the end of the season, state championship time.

"I kept improving throughout high school and I’m proud of that," Gallo remarked. "A lot of runners burn out over their career but I didn’t."

Gallo and Neill formed a bond as athletes and coach which went a long way toward Gallo’s continued improvement. They learned from each other.

"A lot of coaches told me not to be a front runner but coach Neill told me that I had to run the way I felt comfortable," she said. "I trusted him."

In her own way Gallo made Neill a better coach.

"I picked people’s brains and read a number of different authors on the subject of running because I had never coached someone of that caliber before." he said. "We gained a mutual understanding of what we were trying to do and things just clicked. She was a pleasure to have coached."

Gallo’s breakthrough race was the 1996 Freehold District Cross Country Championships when she announced her arrival on the running scene by becoming the first freshman to win the District title. She would hold on to the crown every fall establishing yet another record, one that can’t be beaten, that of four-time champion.

But for Gallo, the race that made her came later in her freshman year in outdoor track when she pulled off one of the biggest upsets in meet history capturing the 1,600-meter championship. She was only the 12th seed going into the race. But, a startling last-lap kick that would become one of her trademarks, along with her front-running, paved the way for the win.

"That was the best feeling ever," she recalled. "When you win something for the first time, it’s very special. Nobody thought I’d win. I didn’t think I’d win. Winning that race gave me so much confidence for the rest of my career."

It was also a race she would never lose in her career. She would make history back in May when she became the first four-time 1,600-meter champion in meet history.

Although running is a very individual event, Gallo took great pride in being a member of the Howell cross country and track and field teams. With her multi-event talents, Howell was able to win its first-ever girls’ District championships in indoor and outdoor track. They were championships she took great pride in.

All of this running history started innocently enough back in grade school. Like so many other youths, Gallo played soccer when she was young, but started running in grammar school mostly because it was something her father Rocco Gallo had done. Her first mile was somewhere around 12 minutes. But true to her nature, she was undeterred and with prodding from her parents, Rocco and Robin, stuck with running and was soon winning the county cross country title in seventh and eighth grades as a member of the Eisenhower Middle School team.

"My parents told me just to run," she recalled. "My father said, ‘You’ll be a good runner.’ They’re my No. 1 fans. They’re at every meet. They’ve been very supportive."

No one should be fooled by Gallo’s athletic success to think that she is a one-dimensional jock. She may be the very definition of compartmentalizing. When she says she is competitive in everything she means it, especially in the classroom. She was the co-salutatorian of her class.

"School always came first," she noted.

Gallo didn’t give up being a teen-ager to become a state champion and that may be why high school has so many fond memories.

"I didn’t want to sacrifice my high school years totally," she explained.

She had some hard and fast rules like never going out the night before a meet, but she would do all of the things a teen-ager does like going to the movies and concerts to see her favorite bands (punk groups in her case) as well as the senior prom.

A new challenge awaits Gallo this fall when she begins running for the University of Michigan, where she plans to major in pre-law. It’s a new stage with new demands and opportunities.

"I’m very excited," said Gallo. "I’m looking forward to competing against runners who are better than I am. That’s the only way to improve."