The Archbishop Spalding graduate will run for Cornell University this fall
Photographs courtesy Brennan family
Athletes don’t like to be called out by a coach in front of all of their teammates. It’s embarrassing. But that happened to recent Archbishop Spalding graduate and sprinter Garrett Brennan, who was in his second year of running, at indoor track practice. The incident, in November of 2022 remains etched in his mind.
Assistant Track Coach Iman Islam saw Brennan, a three-sport athlete at the time, not taking practice seriously, so he yelled at him again and again.
“He really chewed me out in front of the whole team,” recalls Brennan, who also ran outdoor track and played football for two years. “He said, ‘I could be something special if I really tried.’ I was messing around.”
Islam knows a good track athlete when he sees one. His sister ran the sport professionally and he coached about 20 track competitors that went onto Division I colleges. Islam didn’t want to see Brennan waste his talent.
“I know one thing: you need focus and discipline early,” Islam explains. “When Brennan took it seriously, the sky was the limit.”
Brennan appreciated the wake-up call. He referred to it as a defining moment of his track career. “At that point I got locked in and I really started working hard instead of goofing around,” Brennan says. “Then at our next conference meet, I came in first in the 500 meters.”
That result shaped his future and achievements piled up quickly during his final two seasons. He set school indoor track records in the 200 (21.93), 400 (49.3 seconds), and 500 (1:06.02) in January.
The 19-year-old Brennan holds seven school records overall with the others coming in the spring of 2024: 400 (48.34), 100 (10.67), and the two relay teams. “It means a lot to me,” Brennan says. “I take pride in those records, and I have worked hard for them. I am glad at how far I have come. When people bring it up, I am like ‘wow.’”
After that stellar 2024 regular season, 5-foot-11, 165-pound Brennan competed at the New Balance Nationals in Boston. He went on to run in six other national meets over the next two years, including the Adidas Nationals in Virginia Beach and AAU Junior Olympics in Greensboro, North Carolina.
“I think he is a generational talent for Spalding,” Islam says. “He kind of came out of nowhere. Just imagine if he had started running AAU track in the sixth grade, which most of the kids do. He started running as a freshman at school.”
Photographs courtesy Brennan family
At his recent performance at the Virginia Showcase in mid-January, he ran the 300 dash in a blazing 34.33, which according to the website Milesplit.com was the 33rd fastest time in the country.
“I don’t think any else has been ranked that high in the conference,” Brennan says of his competition in the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference, in which he won five individual championships. “For me to run that fast, I think it goes back to all the training I did in the offseason.”
Those types of performances and competing in national meets led Brennan to get a lot of interest from Division I colleges. He was certainly a coveted recruit and his weighted 3.9 grade-point average appealed to schools.
The Naval Academy and West Point aggressively recruited him along with Colorado State, American University, the University of Buffalo, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. In the end, Brennan chose an Ivy League school in early December: Cornell University. He will run indoor and outdoor track for the Big Red.
“Track isn’t like the NFL, where there is a lot of money,” Brennan explains. “Track scholarships are really hard to come by. So, Cornell is a really, really good school. They have a good team. I am really looking forward to going to the school.” Brennan considers being able to compete at Cornell as his biggest accomplishment.
