Paul Morrison's performances have made it clear: The track star's future is now

Cross country and distance track coach Mike Brady remembers clearly the moment he knew how good Paul Morrison could be.

It was the NCAA cross country championships last year — and Morrison was a freshman phenom lost in a pack of the nation's best runners.

Brady was watching from across the field as the pack emerged from the woods and faced a treacherously steep hill.

"Everyone came gingerly down that hill," Brady says. "Then all of the sudden there's this streak."

With the reckless abandon befitting a freshman phenom, Morrison flew down that hill and showed Brady — and the nation's best runners — that there was a new kid in town.

Reckless abandon could only take him so far that day. Morrison finished 51st in that race. But it was a breakthrough moment in the evolution of an extraordinary runner.

"It was apparent what he was going to be capable of doing," Brady says. "He'll unleash a kick that he was touched by God with."

When Morrison first met his coach as a recruit, breaking the 14-minute barrier in the 5,000 was his goal — to be accomplished in the course of four years. As Morrison crossed the finish line in the 5,000-meter championship at the Penn Relays Thursday night, however, Brady was hardly surprised when a school-record time of 13 minutes, 55.86 seconds flashed across the clock.

Only two years into his collegiate career, Morrison has shown Brady — and the rest of the collegiate track world — not just that he is capable of doing great things, but that he is doing them. Breakthrough by breakthrough, he has extended that "streak" all the way to the finish line.

This has been a year of breakthrough moments for Morrison — a year so complete that this man for all seasons has been named The Daily Princetonian Male Athlete of the Year.

When asked about his most recent accomplishment at Penn Relays, Morrison gives a qualified response.

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"It's definitely a breakthrough. I felt really well doing it. It was new territory.

"But I just had way too much left in the tank."

Breaking an 18-year-old school record by four hundredths of a second and beating his personal best time by 15 seconds was not enough for Morrison. Restless on his laurels, he simply looks ahead to the many miles — and milestones — down the course. It wasn't so much a breakthrough as just one more barrier transcended — another step toward higher ambitions.

After a successful — but injury-plagued — freshman year, Morrison has dominated all three of his seasons this year. In cross country this fall, he surprised all comers by winning the District meet and placing eighth at NCAAs. During the winter season, Morrison helped the indoor team to a Heps crown with a victory in the 3,000. And this spring, he has been dominant again, gunning for a bid to the outdoor NCAAs.

Growing up in Newfoundland in Canada, Morrison had aspirations that were as far from running glory as imaginable. Home-grown on hockey, his dreams were of NHL stardom — not Olympic long distance gold medals. Morrison's path to running was a slow progression. With hardly any training, he would enter a few races in September and October before devoting his attention to his real sport of hockey as winter set in.

As he got older, however, and discovered the hard truths of a runner's body, Morrison devoted more and more time to training for running. And it paid off. In one year of concentrated training, Morrison moved from 115th to 6th place at the Canadian cross country championships.

"That was huge," Morrison says. "Then I realized, 'Hold on a second — I've just gone from mid-pack to taking lead.' Psychologically, I was more excited about running than hockey."

Another breakthrough.

When the time he came to choose a college, Morrison wasn't even heavily recruited. Despite appearances at the World Junior Cross Country Championships, many schools didn't want to take a chance on him.

Enter Brady. Princeton's active recruiting paid off for both the team and Morrison, who found the formal training that was missing during his high school years.

Through his time at Princeton, Morrison has evolved into a championship runner through the timing and orchestration of careful training.

"I'm not a big mileage guy compared to a lot of guys on the team," Morrison says. "I don't believe in going out and running 80 miles a week, 90 miles a week every week. I think it's all a development. I've got to slowly build up."

Like his training regimen, Morrison's career has been slowly building up, timed according to what he calls his "plan."

This year, the plan has delivered. Buoyed by a victory at the Pan-Am juniors during the summer, Morrison decided to take a break — "You've got to treat your body well," the pre-med says.

With confidence and rest, Morrison took the cross country season by storm — while peaking at just the right time. After dethroning rival Steve Ondieki at districts, Morrison headed to what he has called the race of his life at NCAAs.

"The whole season I felt as though I was the underdog," Morrison says. "I like trying to prove myself. That was one of my goals for the cross country season — to prove to people that I could run with anybody."

And at NCAAs in Bloomington, Ind., this fall, he ran with — and faster than — almost everybody. Morrison earned an eighth-place finish and another breakthrough.

"You've got to rank that as one of the top performances ever at the University in the last decade," Brady says. "When he got that done, we had to redefine the goals we had."

Meet by meet, season by season, Morrison continues to redefine his goals as he keeps transcending barriers. He has set his sights on nothing less than the Olympics — in 2004 and 2008.

Step by step, he is plotting out an ambitious running future.

How far will he go? Look no farther than the way he runs.

In tight races, Morrison sticks with the pack until something clicks — and the "streak" is on. He makes his move when he starts thinking about the finish line.

How far will he go? He's already thinking about the finish line, but that's miles down the course.

And this runner never makes his presence known until the end of the race.