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Athletics Hall of Fame: Spotlight on Patrick Reed '87
A skiing injury before his freshman year at St. Andrew’s changed the course of Pat Reed’s athletic career. Reed ’87 would trade in his lacrosse stick for running shoes and go on to lead the cross country team to four straight PVAC championships.
“I couldn’t do lacrosse, so I started running,” Reed said. “I got the bug…that injury was the opening.”
Running would open up even more opportunities for Reed in college and beyond. St. Andrew’s will celebrate his athletic accomplishments when he is inducted into the Athletics Hall of Fame on Oct. 15 during a ceremony at the new student center as part of Homecoming and Reunion Weekend.
“He was, from day one, one of my stars,” said Gary Wyatt, Reed’s cross country coach and a current teacher. “He was really our first individual PVAC champion in any sport.”
Being coached by Wyatt, an accomplished runner himself, and the “infectiousness” of each teammate’s success inspired the runners to excel, Reed said.
“I definitely caught on fire and my friends rallied around that,” he said. “I just think winning the championship all four years and the consistency it took to do it are the greatest things I did and we did as a team.”
By the time Reed graduated, he had been named an all-conference runner four years in a row and an individual PVAC champion. To top it off, Reed played on the school’s first championship basketball team his senior year.
“I would get mad at him because he worked too hard. He worked too fast and too hard,” Wyatt said, adding that Reed was the first student he equipped with a heart rate monitor. “He never took a day off—he was almost obsessive, but also a great competitor.”
Reed took a break from running competitively while studying at Colby College and instead went out for the school’s soccer team. Running, however, would be the key to his success.
“When we did the five mile run, I beat everyone by a mile,” Reed said. “It helped me get a starting position as a sophomore waking on to the team. It was huge.”
His brother, Matthew Reed ’88, said playing soccer allowed Patrick to “recharge his batteries” and return to running with the goal of making it a lifetime sport.
“It allowed him to be refreshed and take up post-collegiate running with a whole new perspective,” Matthew said.
Reed got back into running when he learned one of his former cross country teammates had won a marathon. Each accomplishment motivated him to do better—he would record third-place finishes in the Marine Corps Marathon in 1997 and the Philadelphia Marathon in 1998, with a personal-best time of 2:25 in the marathon and 1:05 in the half-marathon.
“I just sort of took that 100 percent attitude and started training as hard as I could,” Reed said.
He would go on to run internationally and, in Switzerland, complete the SwissAlpine Marathon 78k course in seven hours and 43 minutes, a race he celebrates as his most prized running accomplishment.
“It was sort of culmination of everything. It wasn’t like I won or was super competitive. It was more about the experience,” Reed said.
He is now writing a book about faith and running. He said St. Andrew’s gave him the foundation to succeed, both athletically and academically.
“St Andrew’s is definitely in my blood,” Reed said. “I needed that nurturing and that security to be able to grow and develop.”
He said he is “honored and grateful” to have been chosen for the inaugural class of the Hall of Fame, but wanted to dedicate the recognition to his friend Tron Carson, an alumnus who died in 2009.
“He is a person that was inspiring and he kind of represented a lot of what’s important to me about running,” Reed said.
For his brother Matthew, Reed represents the ideal student athlete.
“He was someone I looked up to as a role model for how to do it right, how to work hard and achieve, to celebrate teammates’ successes, to stay humble and hungry, and to have fun through sports while also making it a challenge at the same time,” Matthew said.
St. Andrew’s Episcopal School is a private, coeducational college preparatory day school for students in preschool (Age 2) through grade 12, located in Potomac, Maryland.