Fast Times

Remember 13? Braces. Books. School band. Hanover's Drew Calcagno is juggling all those and much more as an accomplished triathlete dreaming of Olympic glory.

(Photo by Kelly Davidson)

By Kathleen McKenna  |  May 6, 2007

Cliff Hesson was about a quarter-mile from the finish line of last September’s Duxbury Beach Triathlon when he realized he would end the race just a little farther back in the field than he had expected. After swimming a half-mile in the chilly waters of Duxbury Bay, then biking another 13.7 miles, the 47-year-old Hesson was closing out his 3.3-mile run when he felt a pat on the back. “Good job!” the fellow competitor said before blowing past him. It was 13-year-old Drew Calcagno – and he was hardly breaking a sweat. “I’d like to say Drew was struggling at the finish,” recalls Hesson with a grin. “But he wasn’t at all. He was calm, cool, and collected, with that long stride of his and a big beaming smile on his face, just cheering me on.”

It wasn’t the first time Calcagno had passed his father’s friend Hesson in a race. That happened when Drew was about 10.

He stands barely 5 feet tall and weighs 85 pounds, but Calcagno, who has become a fixture on the local triathlon scene, is no small wonder. Now in the eighth grade at the Hanover Middle School, he ended up taking first place in the 19-and-under group at the Duxbury event last year and frequently finishes ahead of much older racers. “Drew is like an adult in a kid’s body,” Hesson says. “It’s just so amazing to see this little kid finishing among the top adults.” So far, Calcagno has competed in 35 “sprint” triathlons, some of them only for kids – shorter versions of the grueling Ironman triathlons, which consist of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride, and a 26.2-mile run. He’ll kick off his 2007 season next weekend with the Sudbury Spring Sprint, where he’s sure to pass a few more grown-ups along the way.

“Drew is certainly one of the youngest kids out there,” says Steve Kelley, athlete development coordinator for USA Triathlon, the sport’s national organization. “You can see that the adults really warm up to him. When he goes out to race, he takes it seriously.” Kelley adds that Drew serves as an example to other kids that you can enjoy participating in triathlons and still have a life. Instead of getting too wrapped up in competing, he says, “Drew has lots of other things going on.”

That’s a bit of an understatement. Besides swimming, biking, and running, Calcagno enjoys playing the saxophone (he’s in his school’s band), scuba diving (he was certified before a trip to Turks and Caicos Islands last year), cooking (with encouragement from his mom, a personal chef, he created a recipe for herb-marinated grilled swordfish), musical theater (he sings and dances with a performance troupe at school), playing on his hometown soccer team, and doing karate (he earned a black belt at age 11). Oh, and he also volunteers at church, surfs, snowboards, races sailboats, and competes in golf tournaments. That’s a whole lot of extracurricular activities. “He can handle it,” says his father, Dennis Calcagno, an attorney who lives in Hull. “He fits it all in.”

It’s not surprising that both his parents are triathletes. Two years ago, Dennis took Drew to Germany, where Dennis participated in an Ironman competition in Frankfurt and Drew bicycled and ran in an “Iron Kids” event in Friedburg. Of the 60 youth competitors, Drew was the sole American. And, yes, he took first place. His mom, Darlene Calcagno, introduced him to the sport about eight years ago, when she started dragging him along to meetings of the Bay State Triathlon Team. When Drew was 7, she signed him up for his first event, a youth triathlon in Worcester, which featured a 25-meter swim and some kids riding Big Wheels and tricycles (he rode a regular bike).

Of all his activities, Drew says, the triathlon is his favorite, because it’s “complicated and hard. You don’t just have to be good at one thing. You have to be good at three.” He prides himself on his smooth transitions from one segment of the race to the next. Switching from swimming to biking usually involves unpeeling your wetsuit, drying off, brushing sand from your feet, pulling on your socks and cycling shoes, and donning a helmet. “Getting from the swim to the bike takes me about 20 seconds, and every little second matters,” he says. “If someone beats you by 7 seconds and you wasted 8 seconds on your transition, well, you start to think about that.”

Calcagno, who broke the Hanover Middle School track record with a 5:50 mile, says running is his strongest triathlon event, followed by cycling, then swimming. To improve his stroke, he works out four times a week with a YMCA club team. In warm weather, he’ll go for a run around his neighborhood in Hanover or bike through Hull and Cohasset with his dad. A computer program called Training Peaks helps him plan his workout sessions and communicate with a personal coach. But his mother says his training is often merely “running around [the outside of] the house 20 times in his bare feet.”

It’s wrong, however, to think of his life as one extended regimen of exercise and activities. An only child (his parents divorced when he was a baby), Calcagno says his favorite thing to do is play outside and hang around with friends, and he bristles when people suggest that his schedule keeps him from enjoying his youth. “Lots of people say, ‘Oh, that kid, all he does is train all the time, he never has any fun,’ ” he says. “But that’s not true. Lots of times I’m running around the block, then I see a friend, say hi, and that’s it for the run.”

After this summer, another kind of transition awaits: The straight-A honors student will be a freshman at Boston College High School, where he received an academic scholarship. Beyond that, he’s got his eye on the 2016 or 2020 Olympics (the triathlon has been an event since the 2000 Sydney Games).

And someday, he hopes to become an architect, a Navy SEAL, or a professional triathlete. Or perhaps, he says, all three.

Kathleen McKenna is a freelance writer based in Hingham. E-mail comments to magazine@globe.com.

© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.