Byrne, As In Blazing

His legs are short, with knobby muscles like those of a soccer player, not those of a miler—or so they say. But 17-year-old, redheaded Kevin Byrne is the best high school miler in the country, an excellent two-miler, a very good half-miler, a good quarter-miler and a fair high jumper, This past indoor season he won all five of the individual races he entered, and his team won all four of the relay races he anchored. In January, at the Philadelphia Track Classic, he won the prep mile in 4:08.0. One week later he took the Millrose Games' high school mile in the same time. According to the Track & Field News rankings, the next best high school miler in the country is Dirk Lakeman of Eugene, Ore., who has run a 4:09.4 outdoors. In February, Byrne ran an 8:59.7 indoor two-mile, which was the fastest in the country until Brett Hoffman of St. Petersburg, Fla. did 8:54.9 last month, also outdoors.

Kevin is a master of pace. Anchoring his Paramus ( N.J.) Catholic High team in the distance medley relay at the Eastern States Championship on Princeton's 220-yard indoor track last March, he got the baton 80 yards behind the leader. He won by 10 and his split was 4:07.4, the best high school mile leg of the season. He did not panic and rush off foolishly when he got the baton, as a lot of runners would, seeing themselves so far behind. "I figure out what shape I'm in," Kevin says, "and how fast I'm capable of going. I plan the first three quarters, perhaps a 62, a 2:04 and 3:06, and I take it from there. They'll all die for me." Kevin was still 25 yards behind the leader with a quarter mile to go, and did not go ahead until 150 yards out. "I waited for seven laps," he says. "If I had gone out too fast, I would have died."

Kevin runs anchor on three relay teams for Paramus, the distance medley, the two-mile and the mile. And even though he is usually far behind when he gets the baton, he likes to compete in relays. He likes to come from behind, he likes to give half a dozen runners a huge lead and then reel them all in. He likes hearing the crowd cheering for him, not the leader. "I probably wouldn't know what to do if I got the stick with a lead," he says.

Hugh Monahan, also a redhead, who hands off to Kevin in the distance medley and in the two-mile relay, says, "We run as fast as we can. If we give him the baton nine seconds behind, we know we can win." And quarter-miler Phil Scialabba says, "Knowing that he can pull it out takes the pressure off us."

There are times, naturally, when Kevin does not pull it out. Then he does not blame the team, he blames himself. "Sure, if I come back from eighth to second," he says, "they tell me, 'great race,' but I feel disappointed with myself. I have failed."

Such was the case three weeks ago at the Penn Relays. Because of Kevin, Paramus was the prerace favorite in the distance medley, in which the legs are 800, 400, 1,200 and 1,600 meters. He had tried and failed to pull out this race for his team on two previous occasions, and this would be his last chance to do it as a high school runner. Hugh Monahan was supposed to hand off to Kevin with a 6:01 time for the team after 2,400 meters. From there Kevin planned to run splits of 60, 2:03 and 3:05. But Hugh, who was suffering from the flu, ran his leg in 3:13 instead of his expected 3:11 and Paramus was in 11th place when Kevin got the baton. This time he did not heed the clock in his head and simply took off. He finished in 4:04.1, the equivalent of a 4:05.5 standing-start mile. Still, he was third, some 10 yards behind Vince Mutarelli, a junior from Mount St. Michael of New York, who was caught in 4:11.

Mike Glynn, 32, who has coached track at Paramus Catholic since the school opened 11 years ago, calls Kevin "the best high school runner this country has ever had. He had a better indoor season than even Jim Ryun [the high school record-holder with a 3:55.3] had in 1965; he went under 4:10 four times. Sure, he hasn't run a sub-four-minute mile, but I think he has a great future, and I'm not going to jeopardize it just so I can say I had a kid who went under four."

Kevin spent his first two high school years at Bergen Catholic, a fierce rival of Paramus. As a sophomore at Bergen, he had run a 4:15.6 mile at the Millrose Games, finishing second in a photo finish with Marty Ludwikowski of Cherry Hill, N.J. "Before that race," Kevin says, "I had no pressure on me. Then suddenly, everybody was asking, 'What's he going to do next week?' I had a real letdown. For a while I didn't run any 4:15s. I ran three races a meet each week. In my sophomore year I ran a total of 65 races."

Kevin transferred to Paramus because, he says, "There was a lack of communication between me and the coach. I was a 15-year-old kid thrown into stardom and there was nobody to talk to. I had met Coach Glynn at meets and I could talk to him. Besides, there are girls at Paramus."

When Kevin came to Paramus, the first thing Glynn did was cut him down to 40 races. Then he taught him to hold his elbows lower so that he would not tie up in his neck and shoulders. But most of all, Glynn worked on rebuilding Kevin's confidence.