»Yellow Springs state champions List on B5
“This means more to my brother (Alfred) than it does to me. He gets a lot more enthusiastic and hyped-up than I do — and he’s just the coach.”
— Yellow Springs’ Andrew Pierce, after winning his first state championship in the 400-meter dash in 1996.
YELLOW SPRINGS — Andrew Pierce could fly on the track, but today he soars.
Pierce, a state champion for Yellow Springs High School in the 400-meter dash in 1996 and 1997, now pilots the Lockheed C5 Galaxy for the U.S. Air Force Reserves. Capt. Pierce’s unit, based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, has been mobilized since April.
“Once a month, we’re flying missions to wherever in the world, to the European or Middle Eastern areas,” said Pierce, 34. “Then we come back home. We’re kind of like the military’s FedEx. We take cargo wherever it needs to go.”
Pierce always wanted to fly. Until he started training to be a pilot, he had to rely on his legs. His older brothers, Alfred and William, set the pace.
Alfred was part of state championship relay teams at Yellow Springs in 1988 and 1989 and later helped coach Andrew, along with head coach John Gudgel. Initially, Andrew tried to avoid running — especially the event that became his speciality, the 400.
“I ran away from it like the plague,” Andrew said. “They said, ‘You’re going to get out there and run.’ I said, ‘I’m not running the 400.’ I tried every event except the 400. It just looked hard. Seeing my brothers run it, when they crossed the finish line, how tired they looked, I didn’t want any part of it.”
Success changed his mind. In 1996, he had four top-four finishes at state, leading the Bulldogs to their sixth team title. He won the 400 in 48.8 seconds, two-tenths of a second faster than Gates Mills Gilmour’s Antwon Morton.
A year later, the Bulldogs tied for the team title with Southeastern, and the senior Pierce won the title by two seconds. That season, Pierce broke a 30-year-old small-schools state record in the 400.
His time of 47.36 seconds remains a state record in Division III.
Pierce’s success continued at Ohio State. He won the Big Ten championship in the 400 in 2000 and 2001. Meanwhile, he started thinking of different ways to fly. Pierce majored in aviation and used all those plane flights to track meets around the country to pick pilots’ brains.
“We were always in the air,” he said. “Those were really good years. That was the highlight for me, going to the airport, grabbing a pilot and sitting down and talking to him. This was before 9/11, and there weren’t as many restrictions.”
Pierce now lives in Columbus with his wife, Tina, and four children: Andrew, 9; Malcolm, 5; Catherine, 3; and Michelle, 1.
C
ontact this reporter at (937) 328-0351 or djablonski@coxohio.com.
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