Two words led Caitlin Hickin sprinting down a path that would eventually make her a Queensbury Athletics Hall of Famer.
“If you aren’t a runner, you might think in your mind, running is not really a sport. There can be an argument made there,” Hickin said. “It is used as a punishment in most other sports. True. And it’s quite unenjoyable and painful at times. Also true. But I didn’t have much of a choice as far as sports was concerned. It was the only athletic thing I was good at.”
As the Class of 2000 grad accepted her plaque at the Queensbury Union Free School District Athletics Hall of Fame dinner and ceremony at the Queensbury Hotel Saturday, Oct. 19, she talked about how she eventually found her sport.
Her parents tried putting her in swimming, tennis, softball and other sports teams.
“It wasn’t that I wasn’t good,” she said. “I was terrible at all of them.”
So how did she discover running?
Two words.
Field Day.
“Field Day was so fun,” she said. “First, no regular school all day. You got to be outside all day. You got to use your outside voice, yelling and screaming in the bleachers all day and hanging out with your friends and classmates.”
Every student had to pick two events, and since she was bad at all sports, she picked the distance run.
And she won.
And then she won the Turkey Trot in the fall.
Then she joined the modified cross country and track teams in middle school and high school.
A four-time All-New York State first team selection, Hickin is the only Queensbury runner in program history to secure four top-10 performances at the New York State Public High School Athletic Association Cross Country Championships and three top-10 placements at the Federation Championship.
Named to the New York State Top-15 Individuals of the 1990s Decade, Hickin won the Foothills Council championship all four years and captured the Section 2 Class B individual title in each of her final three seasons.
Also a four-year letterwinner for Queensbury’s track and field program, Hickin was a major contributor to teams that captured the 1998 and 1999 Section 2 championships and won the Foothills Council Invitational and dual meet titles each season. The team co-MVP in both 1998 and 2000, Hickin’s third-place time of 4:37.20 in the 1500-meter event of the 1998 NYS Championships remains a school record.
Hickin, who went on to become a two-time All-American at Columbia University, was also inducted Saturday as a member of the 1997 girls cross country team, which boasted the most illustrious season in program history. Hickin joined the stage and the Hall of Fame with her teammates Angela “Angie” Charpentier Taddonio ’98, Alyssa Coffey ’00, Danielle Florio ’00, Guinevere Jones ’99, Erin Sprague ’01, Allison Vosh ’98 and Lauren Wilson Kolak ’01, head coach Dr. Patrick Darfler-Sweeney, assistant coach Kevin Sullivan, modified coach Nancy Micich Guarnier, and student manager Sita Legac Crounse ’99.
“While the training would get a little boring and monotonous at times, and the races were usually painful with some occasional God-awful weather mixed in,” Hickin said, “the fun part was being on a team, being silly, laughing with your teammates — just like Field Day.”
The 2024 inductees included:
1997 Varsity Girls Cross Country (team of distinction)
William “Bill” Anderson Jr. ’89 (contributor/athlete honored posthumously)
Julie Clark ’89 (athlete)
Gary Crossman ’92 (athlete)
Kevin Crossman ’94 (athlete)
Heather Fiore DiBiase ’93 (athlete)
Jeffrey Dybas ’87 (athlete)
Joshua Etu ’99 (athlete)
Matthew Goetz ’87 (athlete)
Brendan Harris ’98 (athlete)
Caitlin Hickin ’00 (athlete)
Dr. Christine Nicholson ’89 (athlete)
Scott Paltrowitz ’00 (athlete)
Suzanne LaMere Seifert ’88 (athlete)
Daniel Stine ’98 (athlete)
Eric Stoddard ’00 (athlete)
Kevin Sullivan (coach)
Adam Terry ’00 (athlete)
Robert “Bob” Underwood (coach)