True brotherhood on the track
ZELIENOPLE — Time was running out and John Urban simply wanted to beat the clock.
So Urban, an assistant coach for the St. Gregory School’s developmental track and field team in Zelienople, decided to put his four sons in the same 4x100 meter relay event during a regular season Pittsburgh Diocesan meet at North Allegheny’s Newman Stadium.
The development division is kindergarten through fourth grade. Dave Urban is a fourth-grader at St. Gregory while James is in third grade, Luke first grade and Paul in kindergarten.
“This was the only year all four would be in the same division,” Urban said. This meet at North Allegheny was the second to the last regular season meet of the season.
“It was like ... now or never.”
All four of his sons have competed in the 4x100 relay this season, but never in the same foursome. St. Gregory generally sends three 4x100 units on to the track in each meet.
“This was a great opportunity for those four boys,” St. Gregory coach Mark Harmanos said. “They’re great kids and they push each other to their limits. That’s pretty muich what our team embodies, so I was all in favor of this.”
Urban had been thinking about running the four together in a relay all season.
“Strictly something I wanted to see happen,” he said. “It would be such a unique thing and we were never going to have the opportunity again. So why not go for it?”
He didn’t expect the boys to be competitive.
“We’re talking about having a first-grader and kindergarten kid running against teams of all third and fourth graders,” Urban said. “We had good, clean hand-offs and the boys ran hard, but it was only going to be so good under those circumstances.”
Still, the Urban quartet placed ninth out of 18 teams.
“The years for our youth development team spans five years,” Harmanos said. “There’s no other time in these boys’ lives — not even in high school — when they would have been able to do this.”
St. Gregory competed in its league championships last week at Robert Morris University’s Neville Island. The boys team placed second in the small-school division and third overall.
There are approximately 45 youths on St. Gregory’s track and field roster.
