Men's Cross Country | 10/15/2018 10:09:00 AM

A celebration of Al Cantello's career will take place on Friday night at 6 PM at Akerson Tower. For more information on the event go here. Cantello will also be honored during Saturday's football game vs. Houston:  https://navysports.com/news/2018/9/18/mens-cross-country-a-celebration-of-al-cantello-announced-by-navy-athletics.aspx 

The highlight memories that marked his outstanding run with Navy's cross country and track teams linger with Lucas Skalnaker. He won a pair of Patriot League titles and won back-to-back dual meets against arch rival Army. In 2016, Stalnaker led the Midshipmen to their first NCAA cross country championship in 19 seasons. The following spring, Stalnaker earned All-America honors by finishing fifth in the 10,000-meter run at the NCAA outdoor championships.

Stalnaker also will never forget how it all began for him at Navy – on the day he met legendary cross country coach Al Cantello, who essentially told the star runner and rifleman from Fort Mill High School in Tega Cay, S.C., to get lost. It was the summer before Stalnaker's senior year in high school. He had yet to receive his Naval Academy appointment, and was attending the academy's summer seminar. The thought of meeting a coaching icon – Cantello was 45 years into his cross country head coaching run – was irresistible.

"I figured I had a good chance to make the rifle team," recalls Stalnaker, who captained that squad at Fort Mill as a senior. "But I was drawn to the cross country section at the seminar. I wanted to meet Coach Cantello and tell him I was interested in running for him. "Coach had no idea who I was. He looked at me, kind of snickered at me, then dismissed me," Stalnaker adds. "He told me, 'You will never run for me – ever.'

Looking back, Stalnaker realizes Cantello actually was testing him, to see how the youngster would respond to those gruff, challenging words. Stalnaker eagerly took the bait. During plebe summer in 2013, he couldn't wait to report to cross country practice as a walk-on.

"Coach lit a fire under me," he says. "I showed up at practice with a chip on my shoulder. I wanted to send him a message. Later on, I realized he wanted me to stand my ground and fight back. The one thing [Cantello] always wanted more than anything else was for you to compete."

After an astounding 50 consecutive years at the helm of Navy men's cross country, and after 55 years with men's track and field, mostly as an assistant working with distance runners, Cantello finally has stepped away from the competitive fire at age 87.

"It was time to pull up my umbrella and get off the beach," says Cantello, who led Navy's cross country team to eight Patriot League titles in his last 10 seasons and took the Mids to 12 NCAA championship appearances – including his last two teams. His cross country record was an astounding 246-71-1. Combined with his eight years as men's track and field head coach (1981-88), his record was 322-83-2. Against Army, Cantello earned a remarkable 49 N-Star wins.

"Going to the NCAAs the last two years should have made me feel immortal," he adds. "I'd talked with a lot of former coaches and they told me that I'd know when it was time [to go]. My emotional well was drained."

A 1955 LaSalle graduate and former U.S. Marine, Cantello set a world record in the javelin throw in 1959 and won a bronze medal that same year in the Pan American Games. The following year, Cantello competed for the U.S. Olympic Team in Rome.  Three years later, he took a job as assistant track and field coach at Navy, working with throwers. In 1968, he became the fourth cross country head coach in school history.

Over the next five decades, thousands of runners came and went. Many did not last long, which was due in part to Cantello's intensely demanding style.

"Not everyone loved Al. The runners who understood him all loved him," says Justin Mickolay. "He was more of a psychologist than a coach. He was a deep reader and a master at inhabiting the minds of young people. He would ask us to reinvent ourselves. He had a profound impact on me."

Think about Cantello's longevity. He started at Navy coaching runners old enough to be his little brothers. He ended by coaching runners young enough to be his great-grandsons. Along the way, Cantello coached 10 All-Americans combined in cross country and track, led by Ronnie Harris, his best distance runner. In 1996, Harris, on his third try at the Olympic Trials, became the only runner coached by Cantello to compete for the U.S. Olympic track and field team.

Harris, who came out of high school as the second-fastest miler in the state of California, could have taken full-ride offers to USC or Arizona State or Columbia. He chose to come to Navy, in large part because he and his mother were drawn to Cantello. Harris went on to become a three-event, All-American.

"Al basically introduced me to track and field in a way I never would have learned from anyone else," Harris says. "He would tell us we were blessed to be doing this. If you're going to put 'Navy' on your chest, you're going to put it all out there. It wasn't Al I had to answer to as much as I had to answer to myself. Did I do everything I could? "He respected true effort – taking chances and going out of your comfort zone – more than winning. There was nothing he hated more than under-achieving. He would find that thing that gets to you. He'd tell me things like, "You are not as good as you think you are.'"

Cantello hates speeches. He abhors talking about himself. Good luck getting him to go on about his world record, or his unusual javelin throwing form (captured in black and white on YouTube from 1959) that shows Cantello thrusting his body so forcefully into his finish that he ends up on the ground in a near, push-up position.

His ex-runners describe him as a natural motivator, minus the rah-rah, and a creative strategist, with a steady sense of a runner's pulse and thinking. He demanded discipline – eat right, get as much proper rest as possible, come to practice ready to follow his plan and push yourself beyond your limit.

Cantello didn't do warm-and-fuzzy. He reveled in keeping his guys off balance by being unpredictable. He cut runners down to size with biting quips. He was a mentor, and a tormentor. And the Midshipmen would be reminded of Cantello's place in the sport regularly when they would travel to compete.

"Going to meets was like walking around with a celebrity," says John Hayes. "There was no one who didn't know Coach and no one Coach didn't know. Every [opposing] coach would come up to him and shake his hand. It was like being with a 30-year Senator. Coach has that charisma about him."

"You might get upset with [Cantello]. But then you'd fall back in line with him and you'd want to run through a wall for him," Hayes adds. "You never knew what he was going to say. It was a love-hate relationship. But Al used to say that love and hate are friends. And he was fiercely loyal."

"[As a coach] you've got to be a little ruthless, but not unscrupulous," Cantello says. "Motivation is an art, not a science. How do you make a sport as punishing as this fun? I'm in the seduction racket. How do you stay relevant [at my age]? You can't get older. You can't pontificate. You have to be a man-child."

Jon Clemens, who in his final season attained All-America status in the 5K indoor, the 3K outdoor and the steeplechase, fondly recalls the time he and some Mids competed in the Heptagonals at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx.

After the meet, Cantello drove the Mids to the Empire State Building. He ordered the runners to go to the top of the famous landmark and call their mothers collect.

"Al and I had a fun and tumultuous relationship. He can be a curmudgeon, but you know he cares about you," Clemens says. "He would tell us this sport is about turning yourself inside-out for your team. Are you willing to take risks and able to hurt?"  "If you were a prima donna, Al would eat you for dinner. And his one-liners were out of control," Clemens adds, noting the Mids have immortalized some Cantello lines on tee shirts over the years.

Cantello would say things like, "Seek suffering. Love it. Learn from it." Or, "The clock never has a bad day, and it never lies." Or, "Who was that kid who ran like a piece of dandruff?" Or, "One day, when you're rocking your baby to sleep, you're going to miss me. But today, you're going to curse the day you were ever born."

Aaron Lanzel, who was captain of the 2002 cross country and 2003 outdoor track teams and competed at the U.S. Olympic Trials in 2004, took on the task of succeeding Cantello last summer.  Lanzel, whom Cantello sought out to replace him, learned an unforgettable lesson from Cantello as a plebe. After facing a bad case of shin splints early that season, Lanzel decided to take some time off from cross country to heal and maximize his study time.

Bad move. Upon Lanzel's return to the team, the wrath of Cantello awaited him.

"Al knew exactly the weaknesses he needed to poke at and cut out, to set you on fire and make you want to compete," says Lanzel. "In front of 40 guys, he points at me and asks, 'Does anybody know his name? Are you getting on the bus today?' I'd never been admonished like that before. Coach knew exactly what he was doing with his scalpel."

Cantello says he had numerous chances during his coaching run at Navy to leave for more prestigious, Division I programs.

"I have no regrets about staying here," Cantello says. "You're not going to win a national championship [at Navy], but you're dealing with reliable, punctual, structured, honest students. It's a good product. [As college runners] we're a throwback to pure amateurism here, an anachronism.

"What would a Midshipman want to run for? They already get paid to go to class. They already have so much to take on here," he adds. "Why would he want to get up at Zero Dark Thirty and put in a morning run?

"These kids run because they want to run. They're like Spartans who keep showing up in shorts and shoes, the bare essentials, willing to hurt.  That's why I kept showing up."