<p>BEN KOZY: MAKING EVERY SECOND COUNT
By Jonathan Maggart, Assistant Sports Information Director</p>
<p>The moral, mental and physical development of a midshipman at the Naval Academy is challenging and one soon learns that time is a valuable commodity.</p>
<p>Compound this with competing in sports during all three seasons throughout ones four-year stay in Annapolis, a midshipman is forced to manage his time wisely. </p>
<p>That is the case for Navy senior runner Ben Kozy.</p>
<p>A four-year member of the cross country and track & field teams, Kozy has never had the luxury of focusing solely on his studies or a full weekend of liberty. Instead, the native of Houston, Texas, has spent countless weeks and weekends on the track and/or trails, where he has emerged as one of the teams top middle distance runners.</p>
<p>While excelling on the field of athletic competition, Kozy has maintained that high standard in the classroom, where he owns a 3.45 cumulative grade-point average while majoring in systems engineering. In addition, twice he has been named to the Superintendents List, earned Commandants List recognition during all six semesters and ranks eighth among his class in Military Order of Merit.</p>
<p>You come to the realization really quick that if you are going to make it, every spare second is doing something, said Kozy. If you are going to be successful both athletically and academically, sacrifices are going to be made.</p>
<p>Those sacrifices must pertain to his sleep habits, as not only does he compete year-round and make the grade in the classroom, he spends countless hours scouting the opposition, regardless of the size of the meet or field of competitors.</p>
<p>He makes the time to help the team, which is really incredible, said Navy head mens cross country and assistant mens track & field coach Al Cantello, who is in his 45th season at the Naval Academy. The stuff that he does takes a really long time to do. Hell figure out every returning letterman in a meet like the Roy Griak Invitational, where there are 20-plus teams. He would find out who the seniors were last year, then check the website and see who has returned and what their pedigree is, then figure out where we should finish if we run our race. Hes just uncanny that way. I dont know how he gets the time to do it.</p>
<p>If I were to ask anybody on the bus how Oklahoma did up at Penn State last week, the whole team would respond, Kozy does. Hes astute a student of the sport.</p>
<p>Much of the analysis Kozy uses in scouting the opposing runners stems from his high school background in computer science, which was one of the factors that compelled him to take a look at the Naval Academy.</p>
<p>I was kind of a computer nerd in high school, Kozy recalled. I love sports, but we also had a very good computer science program at my high school. I took four years of it before coming to Annapolis. I came to the Academy knowing C, C++, Java, Dynamic C, Visual Basic and some older programming languages such as Basic, Machine Language and Fortran.</p>
<p>While learning various programming languages, Kozy also competed on the track & field team at Jersey Village High School, where he captured District 16-5A titles in the 1,600-meter run, 3,200-meter run and cross country. With his help in the middle distance and distance events, the team went on to win the district championship during his senior year.</p>
<p>However, Kozy did not have many athletic offers coming out of high school, as Navy, Miami, Yale and Dartmouth were the only schools in conversation with the six-foot tall runner.</p>
<p>I was more of an average track runner in high school, admitted Kozy. I was running a 4:24 mile, 9:49 two-mile and a 15:55 in the 5,000 meters. It seems like a lot of guys in high school stop at the 4:24 mark in the mile.</p>
<p>He was running only 35 miles per week in high school, stated Cantello. He ran for fitness and had no base. Right now, kids are running 80-85 miles per week with two-a-days and tremendous intensity.</p>
<p>However, after speaking with Cantello and volunteer assistant track coach Dave Larish, a 1949 graduate of the Academy, Kozy made the decision to become a member of the Naval Academy Class of 2008.</p>
<p>The Naval Academy is kind of the perfect fit for me, said Kozy. I came into summer seminar and I learned about its systems engineering major. For me, its the right balance of computers and math. I knew I wanted to run in college and study in systems engineering, which is not offered at very many places. Navy has the best systems engineering program in the country and I knew I wanted to do some sort of service, so this seemed like the best route for me.</p>
<p>In his first year in Annapolis, Kozy participated in one varsity cross country race and saw some action on the track in a variety of middle distance and distance events. He was able to trim his mile time by six seconds to 4:18.00 and served on Navys 4x800-meter relay at the Patriot League Indoor Championship. </p>
<p>Its definitely tough to compete year-round, especially starting with cross country, considering my niche is track, Kozy commented. So when I was a plebe and started cross country, theres a jump from the high school 5k distance to the 8k in college. Thats a big transition. You have to get used to running 11 _ months out of a year and it took me some time to get used to it.</p>
<p>His next year, Kozy became a regular on the varsity cross country squad, running in six meets and posting two top-20 performances. However, the real tangible signs of reaching his full potential did not break through until midway through the indoor track season in 2005-06.</p>
<p>It was at Penn State two years ago when we led him off in the distance medley relay a 1,200-meter leg, Cantello recollected. I drilled into his head, because he was not experienced, that this was not the Naval Academy. There are not six runners on the track, there are 12 and you are starting on a banked turn. So you get out. Get out. I need somebody with pointy elbows and get out. The gun went off and after the first 30 meters, he was dead last. That evening, I told him to give me his umbilical cord. He said, What? I said, Give me your cell phone. Youre not calling mommy.</p>
<p>Now, the very next day, he runs a sparkling 2:25.13 in the 1,000-meter run, one of the top times in the East Coast. Same track, 24 hours later. Whats the point? The point is he didnt do any training in those 24 hours. He just got his head straight. Now, come to find out, when he has a bad race, he walks up to the front of the bus and hands me his cell phone.</p>
<p>Not only was his time in the 1,000-meter run one of the top times in the region, it was the 10th-fastest time in school history, only 1.62 seconds off the record 2:23.51 clocking produced by Lance Davidson in 1987. Two weeks later at the Iowa State Classic, he would qualify for the IC4A Championship with a blistering 4:09.25 showing the mile, an effort that earned him Patriot League Runner-of-the-Week accolades.</p>
<p>Al Cantello is certainly the best coach I have ever been under, Kozy proclaimed. All you have to do is listen to him, do as he says and the times will follow. My freshman year, I was stubborn and thought I knew everything. Once I started really listening, I knew to just follow what he says and the rest will take care of itself.</p>
<p>Those results followed into his junior year, where he kicked off with three top-20 efforts in seven cross country races. He carried that momentum onto the track, where he produced five first-place times and bested his previous career-best mile at the Iowa State Classic in 2007 with a 4:09.15 showing.</p>
<p>However, in February of this year during an electrocardiogram, Kozy was diagnosed with the Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, a heart condition that can cause a persons heartbeat to rise rapidly without warning due to an extra conduction pathway that sometimes results in dizziness, chest palpitations, fainting and even cardiac arrest.</p>
<p>Since the symptoms were asymptomatic, Kozy still raced during the outdoor track season and produced career-best and team-best times in the 1,500-meter run (3:51.57) and the 5,000-meter run (14:44.04) before having corrective surgery in May.</p>
<p>Before they conducted the surgery in May, while in the clean room, they gave me some adrenaline to see if they could stimulate that parallel circuit (to raise my heart beat), said Kozy. They got my heart rate up to 306 beats per minute. Since they were able to get it that high, they were able to go through with the surgery. Afterwards, I spoke with the doctor about a breathing problem I have dealt with since high school. When I am finishing a race, my mouth is way too wide open, grabbing for air. He said that the parallel circuit formed by this extra tube could throw off your breathing, especially when your body is in unison while running.</p>
<p>This fall on the cross country team, in his first athletic season back from the successful surgery, Kozy raced in six meets, scoring in the first two races before a back injury slowed him up during the latter half of the year.</p>
<p>I saw some difference from last year in cross country, stated Cantello. Judging from his first meet of the year, he kind of stayed at a plateau. To his credit, hes still out there. Hes still plugging away. He has three teammates that are seniors and hes lending support to the team. Hes extremely knowledgeable of the opponent, has the intelligence of how to run a race, what he thinks the pace is and so on. Hes very valuable that way.</p>
<p>Hes not getting any reciprocity concerning helping the team score, but still he hangs in there and helps the team. Hes not getting his card punched with positive reinforcement, but he knows every step he takes on the cross country course is going to help him on the track. Thats not why he does it. He does it for the team.</p>
<p>That training gained on the cross country trails has led several to believe that Kozy will be the one to continue the storied history of Navys mile runners. Among that elite group are U.S. Olympic Trials competitors Ronnie Harris, Aaron Lanzel and Erik Schmidt, as well as All-Americans Greg Keller and Mike Ryan.</p>
<p>He has a tremendous burden, a yoke, a millstone, to carry on the tradition of Navys milers, Cantello announced. Hes the heir apparent and thats an awesome responsibility. That falls on him. He has to carry the torch. Period.</p>
<p>I expect him to go under 4:03 in the mile this year, maybe better. I have very high expectations for him.</p>
<p>Those are big shoes to follow, but Kozy, who will join the submarine force after graduation in May, is willing and ready to take aim at living up to expectations of not only his coach, but himself and his teammates.</p>
<p>I have really high hopes for this track season, said Kozy. After the surgery, I kind of felt like a new person. </p>
<p>We have a ton of good guys returning this year. This is the best group of runners I have ever seen. On the track and during workouts, its a friendly competition to make one another better. Its on our agenda to move past the IC4A Championship this year.</p>
<p>Ship, shipmate, self a concept of prioritizing within the fleet on what is important by focusing on the larger picture and putting the collective team goals ahead of ones individual desires. Whether its excelling academically, militarily, cutting 15 seconds off his mile time, helping on the cross country team, making the time to do scouting reports on the opposition or waiting three months to have heart surgery so that he be of service to his team, Ben Kozy gets that message.</p>
<p>Being able to do that within the same precious time in ones day amazing.</p>