Pierce Murphy was once chased off the Princeville Golf Course on Kauai by security.
He didn’t have a golf club in his hand. He wasn’t looking for a lost golf ball. He had never even attempted a putt on one of the 18 greens.
All Murphy wanted to do was run.
“I’ve been running (on the course) since like ninth grade, usually in the evenings when there are no golfers,” Murphy said. “It’s nice because it’s all grass, so it’s easy on the legs and there are some hills.
“One time I went a little too early I guess. Usually I wait until around sunset.”
A soccer player when he was younger, Murphy turned in the shin guards and the cleats for running shoes once he realized how fast he was on his feet.
“In soccer, I wouldn’t get tired as fast as other people and I didn’t really notice, but my coach did,” Murphy said. “I started running cross country at my high school in ninth grade and I guess I was the fastest at my school and that’s when I kind of realized I was good, and I enjoyed it, too.”
Murphy went to Island School, where there were about 30 people in his high school class. He was the Gatorade State Player of the Year in cross country as a sophomore and it wasn’t until around that time that he began to realize he might be able to get a college education out of the sport.
By the time he won the Gatorade award as a senior in track, he had committed to Colorado.
After redshirting his first year with the Buffs, Murphy has been an integral part of a team that won its second consecutive Pac-12 championship in cross country last weekend.
Murphy finished 14th at the 2012 Pac-12 championships and upped that to a seventh-place finish on Saturday, when he completed the 8 kilometers in exactly 25 minutes.
“I was happy with it,” Murphy said. “We don’t usually race at altitude, but since we had the race up here at altitude on a tough course, I knew the times were going to be a little slower.”
Up next is the NCAA Mountain Regional next Friday, followed by the NCAA championships a week after that.
Once that’s over, Murphy is only one-third of the way done with his running duties for the school year.
He also competes in the indoor and outdoor track seasons, which keeps him occupied all the way through June.
“I’ll get a small break, hopefully I get to come home for a week, and then I’ll start track workouts getting ready for indoor, then another small break, then outdoor,” Murphy said. “It keeps me busy.”
Running, whether it’s cross country or track and field, is a year-round sport, so he only takes a couple of weeks off at the most, usually at the start of the summer when he returns home to Kauai.
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PIERCE MURPHY
School: Colorado
Height: 5 feet 8
Class: Sophomore
High school: Island School on Kauai (2011)
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Growing up in Hanalei, Murphy always returns home to run, whether it’s on a road near his house or that same 18-hole stretch.
Even if word gets out, he’s not worried about running the Princeville golf course again and again.
“You just have to make sure you go toward the later part of the evening, after all of the tourists go home,” Murphy said.
Any earlier, and he has to worry about wayward golf balls heading his way.
“Only once did a golf ball kind of fly near me,” Murphy said. “It was still way in front of me though, so I haven’t worried about it much.”
