Sam Burley: Unassuming champion

Jim Tuppeny died on Nov. 29, 2000. He was 75.

The funeral for the former coach of Penn and Villanova -- and the former director of the Penn Relays -- was held on Dec. 5 on the Villanova campus. Four runners from both Penn and Villanova were to run behind the hearse on the trip from St. Thomas of Villanova Church to the cemetery.

The runners had been told that the trip would be about a half-mile, real easy and downhill. And it was a funeral procession, so it would be a nice, slow jog.

The hearse driver was not in on that part of the plan, though. He slammed it from the beginning. He coasted down hills. And the graveyard was, in reality, three miles away.

A half-mile in, the runners started to fall back. A Penn quarter-miler looked to the best runner on the team for help.

"Burley, you've got to tell them to slow down."

"I can't, it's a funeral procession."

"Burley, Burley -- I'm not going to make it."

"You can't drop out of a funeral procession, Josh, it's not right."

The best runner on the team looked around. Another Penn runner was running in a ditch because of shin splints. Two Villanova girls -- both national champions -- fell back. The quarter-miler got into the car with Tuppeny's family, and tried to get splits on the remaining runners.

Even in a funeral procession, Sam Burley persevered.

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Take a look at Sam Burley. He's 5'9". He's about 150 pounds. He's definitely in good shape, but he wouldn't win any bodybuilding contests. He's not your prototypical runner. He wasn't recognized at meets.

"When I first started winning some races, people knew my name going into races," he says. "People would look at me and act like, 'No way you're Sam Burley.' They didn't believe it was me."

Burley lived down to his looks early in his career. He was last in every meet his freshman year at Cheyenne Central High School. His best time in his specialty, the 800m, event was 2:26. That's not even varsity.

Something changed sophomore year, though. They needed a guy for the fourth leg of the 4x800m relay to have a chance at Wyoming's state championships. Burley was the guy.

"His distance coach saw something in him," his father Dennis Burley says. "He went from like a 2:20 to 2:00."

Burley's team won the state title in the 4x800m, and he would never look back.

The next year? He won everything. The 400m, 800m, 4x400m, 4x800m. The next year, too. And this isn't just because it's Wyoming -- he was running stellar times.

Penn coach Charlie Powell saw something in him, even from halfway across the country.

Burley planned to attend the Air Force Academy. But he went there, didn't like the campus and realized it wasn't for him. So he applied to Penn, and that was that.

"Penn was actually the only school I applied to," he says. "I don't know what I would have done if I didn't get in."

At Penn, Burley immediately stepped into the mix at Franklin Field. He ran a 1:48.23 in the 800m his freshman year. He finished 13th at nationals in an extremely competitive Olympic year.

"Everybody was like, 'Holy cow, he's only a freshman?'" Powell said that year.

Sophomore year was one plagued with injuries, including a stress reaction in his foot. He still led the Quakers to a victory at Outdoor Heptagonal Championships and placed seventh in NCAAs. Even when he was injured, he trained like crazy.

And senior year, he stayed healthy, worked like crazy and ended up a step behind South Carolina's Otukile Lekote at National Championships. Still, being an All-American again and a second-place finish wasn't bad.

His time was 1:45.39 -- the fastest American time that year.

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Burley's running style is simple: run pretty damn fast at the start, keep running fast and run fast the whole damn race. A lot of people call him a kicker, but he's really not. He just doesn't slow down.

"I'm actually not the best straight-ahead sprinter," he says. "I just usually run the same split for both laps of the 800. I mean, I kick, but I just do it earlier than anyone else."

Burley starts his 'kick' with about 300 meters to go. He usually passes about seven to 10 guys and wins running away. It's the competition that gets him. It's something that he's been dealing with his entire life.

"He hates to lose," his father says. "Even when he was little, his brother and sister hated to play games with him -- he'd just freak out if he lost."

How competitive is Burley? He used to lose to his dad in chess when he was little, so his freshman year, he concentrated on learning how to play better. When summer break rolled around, he came home, beat his dad at chess and subsequently retired from the game.

He's so competitive he wrote his goals on a baseball cap in high school and just kept looking at those times, over and over. He made every one of them.

He's so competitive that the first thing he says when you ask him about his second-place finish at nationals last year is, "Yeah, but I think I could've won if I had kicked earlier."

"I'm not quite sure where Sam gets his toughness," teammate Brian Abram says. "He just realizes that it just takes a little extra to become extraordinary. He has a good sense of his season goals and what it takes to achieve them."

There's something you need in track in addition to great physical abilities -- it's great mental toughness, and Sam Burley has a boatload of it.

"The people who say that there's nothing mental in track are kidding themselves," he says. "Yes, you need great physical ability, but there's a huge mental aspect to it."

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So what is left for Sam Burley to do?

He went 13th, seventh and second at nationals his first three years -- so maybe he's looking for an NCAA title at this year's championships from June 11-14 in Sacramento, Calif. He was less than a second off Mark Everett's championship record of 1:44.70 last year. Maybe he'll take that, too.

He finished the year as the third-best American in the 800m indoors, with a time of 1:48.16. His 1:48.45 earlier this year puts him fifth nationally.

The USA Outdoor Track & Field Championships will be held on June 19-22 in Palo Alto, Calif. If Burley runs well enough at NCAAs or at the USA Championships, he'll probably sign a shoe deal.

"All my friends ask me if I can get them free shoes if I sign a shoe deal," Burley says. "I don't know if that'll be in the contract."

Burley isn't just a runner, though.

He submatriculated into a master's program and will stay on Penn's campus next year to train and get his master's in environmental science.

He then wants to spend some time in Europe -- running, if he does well enough to get someone to pay for him to do it.

"The tough thing is whether or not I'll sign a shoe deal... comes down to whether or not I run well at NCAAs and USAs," Burley said. "And there's more rounds of qualifying this year, so that's six 800s in about a week... if I don't run well, I don't get a deal."

After that, maybe on to some sort of job in environmental policy, or a career in running -- you know, whatever comes up. But he doesn't want to run forever.

"I think he has a lot of running ahead of him," Burley's father says. "But it's not a live-or-die situation."

"I've always said I'll quit running for as long as I did it, so about eight years now," Burley says. "I can't be a jogger -- I work too hard for that."

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There's another Sam Burley story. It's one that doesn't get as much attention as his talent in the 800m, but it remains a more important one.

Going into the 2002 Outdoor Heptagonal Championships, the Quakers knew that the title was up for grabs between Penn and Princeton.

On Sunday, May 12, Burley ran the 1500m at 1:15 p.m. and won. He then ran the 800m at 2:40 p.m. He took second.

Coming into the final event, Penn and Princeton were tied at 121 points, but the Tigers' unseeded team shouldn't have been a match for the Quakers -- except that, in their unseeded heat, the Tigers ran a 3:11.73.

Burley's 4x400m team not only one-upped Princeton, it one-upped the Heps record with a blistering 3:10.37.

That race took place at 5:05 p.m.

"A lot of guys, when they get to an elite level, they stop running for their team," Burley says. "My success is because of my coaches and teammates. I feel an obligation to them."

Burley's more than just a talented runner. More than an overacheiver. More than even a nice guy who's a good teammate. Sam Burley is an All-American.

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