Penn State signee selflessly gave away gold medal at track meet
Penn State signee Saquon Barkley won the gold medal in the 100-meter finals of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference Track and Field Championships last Wednesday, but what he did after the race was far more impressive.
Two hours after his race, Barkley, a Rivals four-star running back from Whitehall (Pa.) High School, gave his medal to a Rachel Panek, a sophomore hurdler from Saucon Valley High School, after a race she’d previously won had to be restarted due to a timing malfunction.
From the Allentown Morning Call:
What happened to Panek before she came across Barkley could certainly be characterized as unfair, and it would be hard to find anybody at the two-day meet — that was a combined championship with Eastern Pennsylvania Conference and Colonial League athletes competing for medals at Whitehall's Zephyr Sports Complex — who felt particularly good about it.
The day's first race, the girls 100-meter hurdles, was stopped by officials when the timing system malfunctioned.
Each of the eight competitors appeared to finish the event at full speed, but the fully automatic clock never started when the starting gun sounded. A trackside official, acting on the timing issue, fired three shots into the air as the lead runners — Panek and Northwestern's Alexis Gawelko — crossed the seventh hurdle. Panek beat Gawelko to the line.
Because the timing system never started, there were no official times. (There was no backup timing system either, according to meet officials.)
After a “30-minute rest period,” the race was re-run. Panek, however, was competing in another event and was unable to take advantage of the rest period. When the race was officially run, Panek “clipped a hurdle” and finished eighth.
Barkley, who had never met Panek prior to the meet, saw what happened and decided that she deserved a medal, too.
"It's really hard to explain," Barkley told the Morning Call, "but something inside of me told me it'd be the right thing to do to give her my medal. Honestly, I love winning races and receiving medals, but I felt she deserved it, too. Everyone saw that girl win her race."
Panek said Barkley’s gesture was “one of the kindest thing’s anyone’s ever done” and that she’ll remember it “forever.”
“It’s not the fact that I didn’t get a medal or first place in the league that I’ll remember,” Panek said. “It’s that somebody noticed and that someone cared enough to make my day by giving me something that meant a lot to them. That’s what I’ll remember forever.”
For more Penn State news, visit BlueWhiteIllustrated.com.
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Sam Cooper is a contributor for the Yahoo Sports blogs. Have a tip? Email him or follow him on Twitter!
