Burrell grad Kaylen Sharrow qualifies for PSAC track and field championships in final try

Facing the end of her competitive running career, Clarion senior Kaylen Sharrow had one box she still wanted to check: qualify for the PSAC track and field championships.

The Burrell grad had been there before, qualifying with relay teams. But she hadn’t been able to make it in an individual event. As she lined up for the start of the 100-meter hurdles at Slippery Rock’s Last Chance meet May 5, it was now or never.

To help pull her along, she wound up in the lane next to teammate Jenna Uncapher, a Hempfield grad who specialized in the heptathlon but also ran hurdles. Uncapher and Sharrow often trained together in practice.

“In my head I was like, ‘I’m going to stay with Jenna,’ ” Sharrow said. “It’s always nice to have someone who hurdles with you so you can push yourself.”

And stay with her she did. Uncapher crossed the finish line in third in a personal-best time of 15.78 seconds. Sharrow was close behind, also with a personal-best time of 15.96, just under the 16.00 qualifying standard for the PSAC championships.

At first, Sharrow wasn’t convinced she had made it. The two competitors who finished between her and Uncapher, both from Slippery Rock, posted times of 15.93 and 15.94, and as she heard the times being given out, Sharrow feared the worst.

But her fears soon were allayed. Then the celebration that was four years in the making began.

“I just made it, but I still made it,” Sharrow said. “When I realized that I qualified, I just started screaming and jumping up and down.”

Perhaps the only person as happy as Sharrow and her parents — at least one of them came to every one of her college meets — was coach Ben Bevevino. Knowing what she had gone through to qualify and how hard she had worked to get there made Bevevino emotional as well.

“That was … I don’t even know really how to describe it,” the sixth-year Golden Eagles coach said. “Kaylen is someone who works so hard. She’s so much fun, and I’ve always wanted the best for her.

“She’s good. She’s talented. So whenever she’d come up short in things, it was hard on me personally. I know (she) should be able to get there. What am I doing? Why can’t I get (her) there?”

Sharrow, Bevevino said, had to overcome a couple of obstacles to finally achieve her goal. The first was running her entire college career with nagging Achilles pain. It’s an affliction, Sharrow said, that had dogged her since high school.

Because the pain often showed up in training or meets, Bevevino said Sharrow had a tendency to run too much on her heels to alleviate some of the discomfort rather than on her toes to maximize her effort.

Somewhere along the line, he said, Sharrow made the decision to not let the pain affect her training and pushed through it.

“You could definitely tell this year — you could see it last year, too — she decided she would do more of the work, just some of the things that needed to be done to make it happen,” Bevevino said. “She took some of that responsibility this year.”

Added Sharrow: “I just sucked it up, pretty much. I can handle the pain pretty well, but it was just irritating that it would come and go. … So I just overcame it by sucking up the pain and just going with it.”

Bevevino also said he believed her head was clearer this year. Sharrow spent part of the past academic year doing her student teaching, which kept her busy. But it was that busy-ness, Bevevino said, that helped to keep her from becoming so uber-focused on the hurdles.

“That made track practices more of a stress relief than trying to focus so hard,” he said, “and kind of the frustration of being on the edge of right there but not being able to get there, it was taking her mind off that.”

Sharrow agreed.

“Hurdlers just always get in their heads,” she said. “At least for me, it was making sure you’re three-stepping between all the hurdles. It’s technique.

“You want to make sure you’re fast enough. You don’t want to hit a hurdle. There’s just a lot that runs through your head when you’re about to hurdle.”

The 15.96 time at Slippery Rock eclipsed her personal best time by six-tenths of a second.

She also, as she had done in the past, qualified as part of Clarion’s 400 relay team.

Neither Sharrow nor her relay team made the podium at the PSAC championships, but it was hard for her to be disappointed. She already had achieved her victory.

“She would start thinking about hurdles more than just flat-out running,” Bevevino said. “Because in the relays, she was a competitor. I had her as my anchor most of the time because I knew she was a competitor.

“That same mindset wasn’t there for the hurdles. But in that very last race of the year … she got a little bit of that competitive spirit.”

As they had been so often, Sharrow’s parents were there. After supporting her through the near-misses, they finally could share in her triumph.

For Bevevino, that was one of the highlights: seeing Sharrow and her parents be able to celebrate that moment.

She now can hang up her cleats with peace of mind.

“I know I left everything I could out there,” she said. “Going (to PSACs) on a relay, you did it with your team. But I did this on my own. I did this myself.

“It was just a good, personal inside feeling that I accomplished that because I’ve been trying to accomplish it for four years now, and I finally got it.”