Speed makes Shields a danger in two sports

Unlike with the "chicken or the egg" dilemma, there does actually exist an answer for senior Brian Shields' dichotomy of sports: football or track and field? Football came first. Recruited by Princeton as a wide receiver, Shields' heart has always been on the gridiron.

But, in this day and age, being an athlete often means you can excel in more than one sport. One thing led to another, and Shields found himself on the track and field team.

"I was having a pretty good season in track my senior year, and coach [Fred] Samara called me up and told me there was a spot on the team if I wanted it," Shields said.

The speed that makes Shields so elusive and dangerous on the football field as a wide receiver also makes him an exceptional weapon to have in an arsenal of sprinters. He accepted Samara's offer, and so his career as a two-sport athlete began.

The typical response to Shields' choice to be a two-sport athlete is: Are you crazy? Everyone knows how difficult it can be to juggle academics and extracurricular activities, and when you add athletics to that jumble of responsibilities time tends to tick away quite rapidly. But, for Shields, participating in two sports doesn't really eat up any more time than one sport does.

"It's not that much more of a time commitment because if I was just doing one or the other I'd still be training basically year round," Shields said. "The biggest difference with doing two sports is that I'm always in season and I'm always competing. The biggest difference between track practice and football practice is that football is way more structured. Everything begins and ends at a certain time and there's no way to get around it. With track practice, you go down there, do your workout for the day and then leave when you're done."

Since all athletes compete so seriously, they cannot afford to take much time off. Consequently, spending time on the track instead of on the football field isn't such a bitter pill to swallow. In fact, it can be a welcome change of pace.

"I do lose out on some of the weight training, though," Shields said.

Despite his decision not to focus on only one sport, Shields has excelled both on the gridiron and on the track.

Just this past year, Shields played an important role as part of the Tigers' explosive passing game en route to an Ivy League title. Shields played all 10 games as both a wide receiver and a punt-return specialist.

Shields nabbed 13 balls on the season for 137 yards and an average of 10.7 yards per catch. As the punt-return specialist for the team, Shields fielded 25 of the 26 punts Princeton forced this year, picking up an addition 167 yards for a solid average of 6.8 yards per return.

A two-sport athlete tends to accumulate a lot of memories, and for Shields, the greatest of all came at the conclusion of this year's historic football season — specifically, during the amazing spectacle at the Yale Bowl, when the Tigers rallied from a steep deficit at halftime to defeat the Bulldogs for the Ivy League title.

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"My favorite memory has to be the game at Yale this year," Shields said. "We just knew in the locker room that we were going to win. Coach [Roger] Hughes decided to let us run the two-minute offense for the rest of the game. Jeff [Terrell] was calling all the plays, and they just couldn't stop our passing attack."

He has enjoyed similar success on the red rubber, running the 100 meter, 200 meter and 400 meter sprints. Last year at Heptogonals, the Ivy League championship meet, he took third place in the 200, his favorite event, with a time of 21.50 seconds. He holds personal bests of 10.72, 21.50 and 48.49 seconds in the 100, 200 and 400 meter events respectively.

Shields secured his legacy in Princeton track and field history two years ago by helping to set a new school record in the 4x400 relay. He ran the second leg, and the team finished in a blazing three minutes, 8.47 seconds.

Two very large but drastically different figures on campus have mentored Shields throughout his athletic career at Princeton: football head coach Roger Hughes and track and field head coach Fred Samara.

Hughes, at the time Shields came to Princeton, was just beginning to lay the foundation of his program. Samara, on the other hand, had led the track and field program to 32 titles since 1980.

"After we finished 2-8 [freshman year], I was wondering what I had gotten myself into, but to Coach Hughes' credit he made the right changes to make us successful and I'm glad I stuck with it," Shields said.

The new Princeton coach was a totally different breed when compared to the legend Samara.

"Coach Samara just kind of commands respect from the fact that he was an Olympian, and you know that he's competed at the highest level of our sport," Shields said.

Shields' last wishes are to cap off his incredibly successful athletic career with strong performance in the indoor and outdoor track and field championships. The indoor Heptagonal meet takes place this weekend in New York City.

"If we win the indoor and outdoor championships, I'll finish my senior year as a three-sport champion," Shields said.