Cross Country, Winter Track, Track & Field
Favorite athlete: Usain Bolt
Favorite team: Washington Capitals
Favorite memory competing in sports: Breaking the school record in the 4x800 last year with my teammates, the record was from 1986. We dropped 16 seconds as a relay in one week.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: When I was racing in the District Championships this season, I realized I grabbed a pair of shorts to race in that were a little too big for me so I had to make sure they didn’t fall down during the race, so I kept having to pull them up each lap.
Music on your iPod: Basshunter, Incubus, Trey Songz, Linkin Park
Future plans: Running Division I track and cross country at Liberty University
Words to live by: “Hard work will always beat talent, when talent isn’t working hard.”
One goal before turning 30: Become an All-American in track or cross country in college.
One thing people don’t know about me: I get more nervous when I have to watch other people on my team compete than I do for myself.
All good things must come to an end.
When Sam Hibbs competed in the PIAA Track and Field State Championships the last weekend in May, it marked not only the end of his career at Hatboro-Horsham High School, but brought to a close a remarkable family legacy.
All three of Hibbs’ older brothers – Josh, Dan and Seth – were distance runners for the Hatters. All enjoyed successful high school careers and went on to run in college. All three left a standard of excellence for the youngest Hibbs to try to reach.
“I think Sam saw himself as the evolution of his family,” said Hatters’ track coach D.J. Fromal. “He’s seen what his brothers have done, seen where they’ve had successes and failures, and he wanted to learn from that. He wants to be the best, but he couldn’t have done that without the work of his older brothers.”
For the youngest Hibbs, it was never about being better than his brothers. His hard work – and any pressure he put upon himself – came from trying to reach the same level, to achieve the same kinds of success, to live up to the standards they set.
“I definitely set goals to try and run faster than my brothers, but I think it was more that they set the standard, and if I could reach that standard, that puts me on the same level as them,” Hibbs said. “We’re all really supportive and it’s special to be able to try and reach the level they were at. There’s definitely pressure, but it wasn’t overbearing. It’s more of a supportive pressure, because they knew I had the ability to do all the things they did and even to excel past that. They really supported me and wanted me to be successful and reach the benchmarks that they set.”
He even set some benchmarks of his own. Hibbs leaves Hatboro-Horsham as the school record-holder in the indoor 3,000 meters, indoor 5,000 meters and the outdoor 3,200 meters, and he ran on the school-record-setting 4x800 relay as well.
And, having set it as his goal since his sophomore season, Hibbs’ final appearance proved to be golden, as he claimed the state title in the 3,200 meters at the PIAA Championships.
“That was a culmination of all the work he had put in,” Fromal said. “For at least two years now, he’s really been aiming at this particular race and this particular championship. Along the way, there were some ups and downs in terms of injuries and not a great finish to cross country. But once the new year started, things started building and building and there really was this attitude where he just knew he was going to be the champion.
“To see how it happened, to see him cross the line with two arms raised in the air, really told me all about him. It said, ‘I put all the work in, I laid it all on the line and I was able to become a state champion.’ It’s great to see kids who work hard succeed, because that’s the lesson we want our kids to learn.”
Hibbs completed the race in 9:09.82, nearly five seconds ahead of the silver-medalist.
“It was awesome,” Hibbs said of crossing the finish line. “That was my goal coming into the season and I didn’t know exactly how it was going to play out. It was the first year I trained year-round, and I didn’t know if that would help me or hurt me, but as the season went on, I started feeling better and things just kind clicked at the end of the season.
“There was definitely a sense of relief. The whole race I was thinking, ‘This is what I’ve been working for.’ I wanted to win it, and coming down the home stretch I was pretty certain I was going to win it. When I finally crossed that line … with everything that I’d worked for, in that moment, I was just so happy.”
Hibbs, who also competes in cross country and indoor track, has made a name for himself – particularly in the 3,200 – as a runner who likes to get out to a strong start and challenge the rest of the field to catch him. Most of the time, no one is up to the challenge.
“I’m a lot more comfortable when I get out fast,” he said. “If I’m out front, I can control the pace and I can make gradual moves to over time weed people out. If I’m in front, I have a lot more confidence that I’m in control of the race. That’s always been something that I’ve done.”
“Sam’s a front-runner,” Fromal said. “He’s brave, he’s not going to back down to anyone. He’s going to take the lead and see if someone else is stronger than him or faster than him. And this year, he made sure that didn’t happen very often.”
Despite his amazing successes on the track and the family legacy, Hibbs wasn’t always sold on running. In fact, there was a time when he believed his athletic future involved ice skates instead of running shoes.
“When I was younger, I thought I was going to be primarily playing hockey,” he said. “That was the sport I had the most fun with. When I got to high school and started running and having some success, it made me sort of lean toward that.
“Seeing as how my brothers were all runners, there was definitely pressure to run and to compete on that high level. It’s nice to be in a family that has that kind of history, but also to be in a family that would have backed me no matter what I decided to do.”
In addition to his athletic prowess, Hibbs has maintained strong grades and has taken many honors-level courses throughout high school. Being a solid student has been as important to Hibbs as being a star on the track, since both are necessary in order to take his game to the next level.
For Hibbs, that next level will take place at Liberty College. Hibbs – whose brother Dan also attended Liberty – will look to make a name for himself anew at a school known for its distance program.
“It’s going to be good to go into a team where you know you’re going to have people ahead of you to chase, and people around you to push you,” said Hibbs, who remains undecided on a course of study. “That’s one of the most important things, to find a team that fits best for you.”
When Hibbs laces up the cleats, he will give Liberty someone hard-working and completely dedicated to his sport and his team, Fromal said. And the Hatters are losing a legacy.
“We’re losing a competitor and a family,” Fromal said. “We’ve been running with a Hibbs for probably the last decade. They’re such a wonderful family – they’re always at the meets, cheering on the entire team. They’re the All-American family, and we’re losing that.
“In Sam, we’re going to miss that drive. He’s someone who has been so focused and so ready to go out and compete every time. That’s not easy to replace.”
Though Hibbs admits that his impending graduation hasn’t quite sunk in yet, he has had the chance to look back on everything he and his brothers have accomplished for the red-and-black. And while he knows the team is in good hands with its coaching staff and several younger athletes who will be capable of stepping up next year, it’s also bittersweet to look back at his family’s history at Hatboro-Horsham and know that the final chapter has been written.
“I know it’s the end of a very special time for the school and especially our family,” he said. “I’m so proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish. It’s really special for brothers to come in and have success like that. It’s not something everybody can say, that three other people in your family have come in and had the same level of success that you’ve had. And I think it was really special for our school and our family to have four people come through that were successful.”
