Chenango Forks Track and Field
Hall of Fame

Graduated:
School Record in Two Mile
Second in Mile

Class Champion: Two Mile (1967)
Sus Champion: Two Mile (1967)

Looking through Chenango Forks Track and Field history, undoubtedly our first pure Distance Runner was Randy Gale.  Randy joined the Track team as a junior coming off of an extremely successful Cross Country season in which he qualified for the Intersectional Meet and finished 98th overall in New York State.  Despite being one of the best runners in Section IV, it took the entirety of his junior year to really learn the race strategy and shorter distance of running two miles on a track as opposed to the geographic rigors and longer distance of a Cross Country course.  It was not until his last meet of his first season that he broke 11:00 in the Two Mile Run.  Sometimes there is a learning curve for even an elite Cross Country runner to make the adjustment to running races on a track and Gale perfectly personified this situation.              

But after a stellar senior Cross Country season in which he again qualified for the Intersectional Meet and placed 54th overall in New York State, Randy was determined to be just as successful in Track.  In the first meet of his senior season he broke 11:00.  By the third meet, he broke the School Record, running 10:41.9.  Amazingly he broke his own School Record in four of the next five meets, culminating with running 10:18.1 at the State Qualifier Meet.  Amidst that unreal run of victories, he won the 2 Mile at both the Susquenango Championship and the Class B Championship.  Well over fifty years later, he is still our only male Miler or Two Miler to ever be both All Conference and Class Champion… and Randy accomplished this in the same season.