On November 6, 2015, Mike Reilly of Ward Melville placed third at the Section XI Cross Country State Qualifier meet. He finished with a 5k time of 16:48 on the notoriously challenging Sunken Meadow State Park course, effectively moving on to compete at the New York State meet.

Only two years earlier in the beginning of his sophomore year, Reilly had only run a 5k personal best of 19:14.

"I wasn’t a very good runner at the beginning of my high school career," Reilly said. "Of the freshmen my year, I wasn’t even in the top 100 in the county, so if someone had said that senior year, I would be one of the best runners in the county, they would’ve been laughed at."

"Coming in third to make States was one of the proudest moments of my life."

From the middle of his sophomore year, Reilly started breaking out, and despite being a year younger than most of us, he started running every practice with the guys in our group.

"I remember specifically one very cold day where he stayed with our top group much longer than he ever had on a hard road run the guys were doing," said his high school coach, Gregg Cantwell. "From that second on, he was 100% committed to seeing how good he could be."

But the story doesn't start or end there. Reilly has suffered an incredible amount of setbacks throughout his running career in both high school and college. Through freak incidents and injuries, I have never seen a runner go through more hurdles and bumps in the road as Reilly has, and still be successful as he has been.

In the winter track season of his freshman year, Reilly attempted to hurdle a black garbage bag as a joke, slipped, fell and broke his knee on asphalt.

In the spring track season of his junior year, Reilly ran his first and last 3000 meter steeplechase, and immediately after suffered a stress fracture in his foot that derailed the entire rest of his season.

But with personal records of 4:22 for the mile, 9:23 for the 2 mile, and 16:48 for the infamous Sunken Meadow course, Mike Reilly would graduate in 2016 as one of the best runners in Ward Melville history.

Mike Reilly's success and perseverance as a high school runner would not have been possible without the support and guidance of coach Gregg Cantwell.

"Nobody in my life has done as much for me as he did. He cared just as much about my success (and the success of the whole team) as I did, and that’s hard to find," Reilly said.

Cantwell constantly lost hours of sleep every day stressing about the workouts Reilly would have to do the next day, thinking of how to maximize his and his teammates' potential.

"It’s hard for me to put into words how much I feel indebted to Cantwell," Reilly continued. "I was incredibly lucky to have him as a coach, and he played a big role in making me the man I am today."

For our coach, Cantwell, however, the work was always more of a pleasure than it was a headache, something that can't be said for every talented athlete he has ever coached.

"Mike Reilly was probably the easiest kid I have ever had to coach. Every single time I told him to do something, he did it," Cantwell said. "He never argued, he never cut runs or workouts short. No matter how hard, or how long the run or workout was, he trusted that I had his best interests in mind."

Even after Reilly suffered a stress fracture in his only steeplechase race, he would aqua jog in the school pool for an hour after school ended every single day for two months.

"Instead of wallowing in his injury and shutting down like most other runners do, Mike split his time that used to be taken up by practice."

And Reilly did this in the middle of his junior year - as he was studying for the SATs and ACTs to get into college. As an aside unrelated to his running career - he would blow both exams away - scoring 1570 and 35 respectively.

We as Reilly's training partners would graduate that year, leaving him alone for most of his workouts and training the next year.

"The next year, when most of his best friends graduated and went off to run in college, Mike led the team in every single workout/practice and in every single meet," Cantwell continued. "2015-2016 was his year, and he made it count. "

Unfortunately, this past spring, Cantwell was fired from his job as coach. I have written extensively about it before, but Reilly was among the people most affected by the news.

"It's an injustice that makes me sick to my stomach to this day."

Reilly is one of the guys and former teammates I regularly still talk with in group chats, and go to parties with whenever we're home. After Reilly finished high school in 2016, he would go on to attend and run for Georgia Tech, finding a team that has served as his best friends and even family since.

"I love it, we've got an awesome group of guys. We know how to go out there and put some serious work in, and help each other through some hard workouts," Reilly said.

"I've been lucky in both high school and college to have a team that I not only value as running partners but also as some of my best friends."

Unfortunately for him, however, he was afflicted with some terrible luck midway through his freshman year.

In January, he would become injured after running a 3000 meter race, and would be sidelined for an extended amount of time.

"After a misdiagnosis and other factors, I wasn't up and running again until about May, just as the Track season ended," he said. "It was rough to not be able to do what I love, especially because pretty much all of my friends here are on the team."

Now, however, he is healthy again, and one thing he stressed in the interview over and over was one word: consistency.

"Right now, I’m focused on staying healthy and getting in good consistent training," he said. "Consistent training is really important. "

As only a sophomore, he wants to rise through the ranks of Division I running as a member of Georgia Tech Cross Country and Track and Field.

"I'm going to try to make the ACC Championships this year, and as time goes on, try to score at ACCs," he said. "We'll see what the future holds, but I just have to stay patient and trust that the hard work is going to pay off. I’ve learned that in the past, so I just have to keep working. ”

Since I haven't been on Reilly's team in two years, there's not much to his current situation as a runner and student that I can speak to. But it's that one word Reilly used that embodies who he is as a runner and a person: consistency.

There's a motto that was on a shirt we got for the Cross Country state qualifiers my senior year:

"Be strong when you are weak. Be brave when you are scared. Be humble when you are victorious.”

When we were upset about a horrible race, it was usually Reilly's demeanor that offset it and made us realize it was just one bad apple of many opportunities. When we felt all high and mighty about good races, it was again his demeanor of consistency that constantly kept us grounded.

In addition, there are always things about his aloof personality or the extremely pale pigment to his skin that always give us a good laugh at any point of a practice or workout.

His consistency is reflective of a maturity that few others on our team had - a foresight that if you trust fully in your training, in your coach, and in yourself, you give yourself the best chances you have to succeed.

Despite all his setbacks, Mike Reilly, at the end of the day, used that mindset and trust to test every physical and mental limit he had with the cards he was given, and as Cantwell put it,

"That level ended up being a large school champion in two events, Long Island champion and meet record holder, and third at the state meet in the mile, as well as being the anchor of a school record in the Distance Medley Relay."