Cross Country
Favorite athlete: Dirk Nowitzki
Favorite team: New York Giants (Sorry Philadelphia, don’t hold it against me)
Favorite memory competing in sports: Running at Districts sophomore year – 1,000-plus kids funneling into a 15-yard wide chute makes for an interesting race.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Tripped 20 feet into my first ever race – forced the race to restart and ran a mile with massive track burn on my side.
Music on mobile device: Alternative Rock – Arctic Monkeys
Future plans: Attend college, Run a marathon
Words to live by: “Everything around you that you call life was made up by the people that were no smarter than you.” –Steve Jobs
One goal before turning 30: Get a word I created into Webster’s Dictionary
One thing people don’t know about me: I am teaching myself to play guitar using exclusively YouTube videos.
By Ed Morrone
If you happened to be driving in Doylestown at 5:45 a.m. on Halloween last year, you probably were left bewildered by the sight of three young men sprinting down the side of the road dressed as a banana, a superhero and a giant mustard bottle.
The sight would be enough for a bleary-eyed motorist to wonder if he or she was still fast asleep; however, if you happen to know Bret Hatzinger, then this scene likely made perfect sense.
Hatzinger is a senior on the Central Bucks West cross country team, and he fills an important role. No, he’s not the fastest Bucks runner, nor has he won the most races; in fact, this is his first year on varsity, and because the team is so deep, he only sometimes falls inside the fastest seven runners that constitute the varsity roster.
You see, cross country is a grueling, unforgiving sport on the body, featuring nonstop sprinting and daily 10-mile runs, often on hilly, difficult terrain. Hatzinger has taken on the responsibility to make the daily grind fun for himself, teammates and coaches, whether that’s organizing a singing-while-running acapella group called The Foot Notes, trying to come up with the best possible name for head coach John Mahoney’s now eight-month-old child, or, yes, dress up in Halloween costumes on predawn runs through town.
“So much of distance running is mental, and if you’re bored mentally then you’re just going to focus on the pain,” Hatzinger said. “It’s about distracting yourself from the monotony of ‘left foot, right foot, repeat’ for miles. I just try to find any way to entertain everybody. The importance of my role is keeping the guys distracted from the daily grind. I’ve found that role of keeping the morale up. People can go way further than they thought they could.
“Still,” he adds. “I wouldn’t suggest running with a cape on. Man, it weighs you down. It’s like having a parachute on your back for miles.”
Before Hatzinger shared the costumed anecdote, Mahoney was asked, on a team with so many talented runners, what makes Hatzinger stand out above the rest?
“Bret is funny,” Mahoney said without a moment’s hesitation. “Cross country can sometimes be a brutal sport. Every day it’s just you beating yourself up. Day in and day out, that’s tough, and Bret makes practice enjoyable for everyone, even us coaches. Not a day goes by when we aren’t laughing at something he says. When things get hard and guys need the boost, he finds a way to make you laugh and cheer you up, but he also motivates you. You don’t always find that balance in cross country, but he has that way about him.”
Like a lot of boys his age, Hatzinger played soccer, basketball and baseball growing up. In fact, he never ran competitively until his freshman year, when he and a friend agreed to try winter track if they were cut from the basketball team. When that outcome came to fruition, they followed through.
Immediately, Hatzinger thought he had made a terrible mistake, given the amount of running involved. He admitted the only thing that got him through the first two or three weeks was personal pride. Then, he began to grow close with his teammates, mainly because the seniors established a welcoming atmosphere, the same one Hatzinger fosters to this day. He stuck with track, and ran it again in the spring; Hatzinger was slow at first, but gradually he got faster and started to really fall in love with the sport.
“I got that first taste of the feeling when you run a personal record in a race,” he said. “It’s absolutely addicting.”
Once spring track was over, Hatzinger assumed he was done until the winter. That was before one of his graduating track teammates suggested Hatzinger try cross country if he indeed liked what track had to offer. At first, Hatzinger demurred. After all, he still didn’t see himself as a runner, but eventually he relented and gave cross country a shot sophomore year.
“Now,” he said. “It’s one of my absolute favorite things. The connections I’ve made with my teammates has been so much fun, especially as we suffer through 10-mile runs and two-a-days together. It’s been a massive reward, because those connections will never go away.
“Not only that, but distance running has taught me more about myself than I ever thought I would learn from it. Going in, I wasn’t a weak kid, but I wasn’t tough, either. I was just there. After running as I have for years now, I’ve learned the character that it builds in me. It’s there forever now.”
Despite his newfound love affair with running, Hatzinger experienced some serious injury obstacles along the way. There was a torn hamstring, torn cartilage in his hip and a pinched nerve in his foot, along with some persistent stomach issues that were lingering. Anytime he felt like he was finding his groove during races, an injury would pop up that would derail him for a month.
“It’s brutal to see progress go down the drain, watching your teammates improve as you’re stuck on a stationary bike,” Hatzinger said. “But it’s given me the self-character not to give up. The support system I have from the coaches and teammates at CB West has been incredible.”
Mahoney said a lot of kids would have thrown in the towel, but Hatzinger is not most kids.
“He’s been sidelined quite a bit,” said Mahoney, also an assistant track coach at CB West. “I think many in his position would have quit out of frustration, but that’s not who Bret is. It speaks to his love of the sport, how determined he is and his need to be successful in everything he does. He’s finally healthy now for his senior year, and I’m very happy for him.”
Of course, Hatzinger was disappointed by the time he missed, but he’s a bigger picture thinker, too. After all, a couple of years ago, he could never have envisioned any of this, so the relationships he’s forged and the experiences he’s enjoyed have only enriched his life, even if injuries have stopped him short of his full potential as a competitive runner.
“I’ve been consistently limited in my performance, so I’ve just tried to focus on creating the same kind of atmosphere on the team that enthralled me as a younger guy in the program,” Hatzinger said. “Now that I can contribute to the team the way I’ve wanted to for years, it’s pretty awesome. It’s an atmosphere we’ve created that defines the CB West program, from coaches to runners.”
The top seven runners on a high school cross country team comprise the varsity squad. As a senior, Hatzinger has sometimes been in that top-seven, while other times he has not. Mahoney said Hatzinger’s performance this season has been consistently strong, and if he’s been outside of that top seven then it’s because of the sheer depth of the Bucks team, which is loaded with talented seniors and underclassmen alike.
Never once has Hatzinger complained about his standing on the team; rather, if he’s outside of the top seven on any given week, he simply shifts back into his natural role of boosting morale in ways only he is capable of.
“Bret knows that I know he gives it his all every race, whether he’s in the top seven or not,” Mahoney said. “He makes the team better regardless. We preach that what makes our team better is our pack running, and he’s done a good job of rallying the troops whether he’s in the mix or not. He never complains about it because he just wants what’s best for us, and he’s worked really hard.”
Hatzinger said that over the course of the rest of his senior cross country season, he’d like to lower his 5k time, preferably under the 17:30 mark. Anything beyond that, including being a key runner on the team as it gets closer to the postseason, is an added bonus. He’s also got winter and spring track seasons to look forward to, and Hatzinger is going to soak up every single moment before he graduates and heads to college.
Speaking of college, Hatzinger is still in the midst of the unforgiving application process. He doesn’t know what school he will attend just yet, and he’s still interested in running at the next level, either on a team at a Division III school or at the club level of a bigger school. Hatzinger’s academic resume should afford him the school of his choice: he’s a member of the National Honor Society and Spanish National Honor Society, was the recipient of the AP Biology Award and American Chemistry Society Award, and, last week, discovered he was one of 19 seniors in the Central Bucks School District to be named a National Merit Scholarship Semifinalist. Hatzinger is also involved extracurricularly outside of sports as the co-president of the Young Democrats Club and works in the CB West school store.
“When I find things that interest me, I won’t leave it until I can achieve the highest level of knowledge possible,” he said. “I’ve always considered myself smart, but never anything exceptional…certainly not smart enough to develop an ego about it. The National Merit Scholarship recognition, something that less than 1 percent of high schoolers get, is pretty mind-boggling to me. To me, it verified that, ‘Hey, you have what it takes succeed academically at the collegiate level.’ It’s influenced how I plan to navigate the next years of my education, and after that, professionally.”
Hatzinger can see himself working in the sciences, whether that means majoring in biology, biomedical studies or something else. He could see himself as a geneticist, a medical researcher or even a lawyer specializing in environmental law and policy.
When he’s not running, studying or taking part in his extracurricular activities, Hatzinger has been teaching himself to play guitar. He’s a big fan of modern alternative rock music, and began by teaching himself chords off YouTube using a starter guitar that his sister had. Hatzinger invested in an acoustic guitar after that, and he hopes to evolve to an electric model sooner than later.
When adding up the sum of Hatzinger’s total parts, you end up with a kid who has ingrained himself in the fabric of the Central Bucks West community academically, athletically and extracurricularly. He will leave a special legacy, one that won’t easily be replicated.
“He’s very unique,” Mahoney said. “We won’t find a guy to replace Bret that’s just like him, and that’s fine by me because he’s a special guy that will stand out in any career. There hasn’t been one day where he hasn’t put a smile on everyone’s face at practice; at the same time, he works hard and strikes this great balance that will be hard to replace.
“He’s just a good person who has a great perspective on school, athletics and life in general. He has everything together, a great reputation in school. Everybody knows that Bret has a work ethic and personality that he brings with him everywhere he goes.”
That includes the personality that rallies the team before sunrise on Halloween to run through the streets of Doylestown dressed in ridiculous costumes. Believe it or not, Hatzinger didn’t always possess this type of persona; in fact, it was running that brought it out of him, and because of that he will be forever grateful. It’s become part of him, now and forever.
“Throughout middle school, I was more introverted than I am now,” he said. “Running pulled the extrovert out of me. What I’ll miss about it…man, so much: mostly the connections I made with teammates and coaches. Those aren’t going away anytime soon. Also, the exhilaration after a good run, getting a faster time than before. That feeling of invincibility after running 10 miles and not breathing very hard at all.
“I’ll miss every aspect of it, from physical to mental to social.”
