Cross Country, Track
Favorite athlete: Emma Coburn
Favorite team: Eagles
Favorite memory competing in sports: Winning the SOL League Meet (as a team) in track 2017 and cross country 2017.
Most embarrassing/funniest memory competing in sports: I do not have one normal running picture. The faces I make are always super embarrassing and look like I am in a lot of pain.
Music on mobile device: Pop and Country
Future plans: I want to run at the collegiate level and become a doctor.
Words to live by: “Be comfortable being uncomfortable.” –Coach Vinnie
One goal before turning 30: Run a marathon
One thing people don’t know about me: I’m an Irish twin (my brother and I share the same birthday, but he is a year younger than me.)
By Ed Morrone
You never want to break a bone as a competitive athlete, but for Brittany Gable, a broken arm provided her the exact moment of clarity she needed to discover her true passion.
Gable, a senior at Council Rock South, just wrapped up her fourth varsity season for the school’s cross country squad. She will also participate in indoor winter and outdoor spring track, but once upon a time Gable played soccer, a sport that takes place during the same season as her now beloved cross country.
“At first it was hard,” Gable said. “I enjoy soccer because it’s very competitive, but it’s also a lot easier to break bones, as I showed my freshman year. It just kind of hit me that I didn’t want to risk any more injury, and I knew I enjoyed running a lot more than soccer after I broke my arm. It was kind of a turning point for me, and I knew it was time to drop soccer and focus on track and cross country.”
Gable was by no means a running newbie, as she had run at the middle school CYO level for St. Bede’s in Southampton. But it wasn’t until her high school years when she became flat out addicted to it. Sure, running is a wonderful activity to stay in peak physical condition, but for Gable, her interest in the sport became much more abstract and existential.
“For me, a run really becomes amazing when you forget it’s a run,” she said. “You’re just going with it, and your mind completely clears and nothing is holding you back. It’s an amazing feeling when you let go of everything in that moment and you focus on enjoying what’s around you. Sometimes it’s easy to forget the simplicity of life and how beautiful all of that can be. Running opened up that mindset for me.”
Talking to Gable, it’s clearly evident she sees the world a little differently than other kids her age, viewing it through more of a complex, analytical lens. Instead of just experiencing life for herself, Gable goes beyond that, with a keen interest on how her actions impact others, especially her teammates, and how she can help make things better for those beyond herself.
Gable’s cross country coach at CR South, Joan Thornton, noticed pretty much immediately that she had a special one on her side.
“She’s not all about how she races or performs as an individual — she cares about the entire group process,” Thornton said. “If a teammate passes her in a race, she’s very gracious and mature about recognizing the accomplishments of others. These traits were evident as a freshman, and it told me she’s going to evolve right beyond this sport into a career in medicine.
“Her disposition is so accommodating, which is why she was accepted from the beginning by the upperclassmen. She’s good about talking to teammates, calming them down, giving pep talks when they need one. She was a cross country co-captain and was recently voted a captain for winter track by her peers. It’s a true measure as to how they regard her.”
For her part, Gable is not an in-your-face, rah-rah kind of leader. Thornton even said she’s had to try to bring the senior out of her shell as her career progressed, just because Gable is reserved and humble in nature.
It was a senior season to remember, too, as Gable and her teammates won the SOL National Conference title as a team, something she lists as her favorite memory competing in sports. Not a race she won, mind you, but one CR South all got to experience together.
“Before leagues, we knew we had the opportunity,” she said. “Just having your teammates to push you through races when all you want to do is give up, that was amazing. The moment we found out we had won as a team was an unforgettable feeling. We were all on top of the world, and I’m so happy to have had that experience with them, especially during senior year.”
Although CR South fell just short of qualifying for states, there was also no reason for Gable and her cross country teammates to hang their heads.
“Their hearts were a little broken as a team, because it was our best performance ever and they fell short,” Thornton said. “I felt it for Brittany and the seniors because of how hard they worked, but she ran her best times at leagues and districts. She had bigger goals she didn’t hit, but that’s just a reflection of her resilient nature.
“That’s the risk of putting yourself out there. Sometimes you meet a setback and you get your heart broken. But in a kid like her, that just makes her will even stronger to go get it and keep striving for greatness. For her it’s a process, not just one race, and girls admire her for that. She’s going to work to be even better for winter and spring track.”
Her remaining goal for senior year is to qualify for states in indoor and/or outdoor track, be it in an individual or relay event. Gable’s desire to leave everything she’s got on the track is something that is fueling her, as she wants to depart the school with zero regrets as she heads into the next chapter of her life.
If that next chapter is anything like the ones that came before it, then there are a few words to describe what that will be like: Hectic. Busy. Chaotic. Nonstop. But that’s exactly how Gable likes it, as taking on more and more responsibilities (beyond just cross country and track) has actually helped her with her time management and balancing all of the responsibilities that are guaranteed to show up down the line during adulthood. When they do, Gable will be battle-tested.
Gable holds a 4.4 GPA with distinguished honors, and as Thornton mentioned, has her sights set on a career in medicine, more specifically pediatrics. She’s looking at schools with strong premed programs, as well as one that will also let her keep running competitively; Gable is eyeing Quinnipiac, the University of North Carolina, Lehigh and Jefferson University, with the latter two serving as frontrunners at the moment.
Gable is also a member of the National, Spanish, English and Science honor societies and serves as vice president of the Math Honor Society. She’s a peer mentor captain at CR South, which helps new freshmen get acclimated to the large, labyrinthine like halls of the school.
She also volunteers what little free time she has to St. Mary’s Hospital, the St. Bede’s CYO track program of which she is an alum, Just Children Day Care while working at Jake’s Eatery and refereeing soccer games on the weekends.
“Time-wise, it was difficult at first,” Gable said. “But when I do sports and other activities I actually have found it helps me manage my time a little better. With that time constraint, it just pushes me a little bit harder to get everything done in a timely fashion.”
Gable has found all of her extracurriculars enjoyable and fulfilling, but two of the most rewarding ones have been the time spent at Just Children and St. Mary’s, an amalgam of what she hopes her future resembles.
“I’ve always loved working with kids,” she said. “They’re just so energetic and fun to be around, so being a pediatrician would give me the best of both worlds. And as far as St. Mary’s goes, it kind of started out as an experiment to see if I would like working in a hospital one day. I got a lot more out of it than I expected.
“Just doing little things like bringing patients water if they needed it, or even just sitting and talking to them. That’s when I really learned how precious life can be. I’m really grateful for everything in my life, and even more so that I’m able to go on those runs where I can be thankful for how healthy I am.”
When asked what she did to actually relax in her free time, Gable said that many of her activities are her leisure time hobbies. However, at the same time, she still somehow finds time to be a normal kid her age, spending as much time with family and friends as possible while also enjoying shopping, painting and reading.
Thornton has zero doubts about Gable’s ability to succeed in college and in the professional world as an adult, mainly because she’s already conducted her life as if she already is in the middle of adulthood. She takes on more than she can handle and is able to compartmentalize it not only to complete all of her responsibilities, but do so at an elite level.
The maturity is something not seen in most teenagers, but Gable is ahead of the curve. Thornton said that Gable was the team’s number two runner for much of the season, and that when current sophomore Marissa Kilgarriff surpassed Gable in the team’s pecking order, the first thing Gable did was take the talented youngster under her wing.
“Brittany looked out for her, showed her how to get through the workouts the right way,” Thornton said. “As I said, she looks at the whole process, and not just one event and how it affects her. The other girls really do admire her for that. She really is a class act. It’s one thing to list all of her accomplishments on paper, but to actually see it play out into such a well-rounded person … and it’s all real with her.”
Gable believes that competitive running served as the catalyst in terms of becoming the person she is today, as well as the person she wants to be.
“It’s why I want to continue running in college, because it’s made me who I am today,” she said. “If I let go of that, I would regret it. I’ve learned so many great lessons and had so many great times because of running. It can be very tough to get through those workouts and races, but that’s just taught me to be resilient during the tough times.
“In track, just like in life, you have to push through to get to where you want to be. The lessons can be transferred to college and into life as an adult. Tough times will come, but as long as you believe in yourself and push through it all, it’s going to work out.”
