Where are they now? Shane Crawford

Winamac track state champ reflects on ‘tremendous honor’ after induction into Hall of Fame

BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS

Sports Editor, RTC

Shane Crawford poses with his plaque after his induction at the Indiana Track and Field Hall of Fame Ceremonies in Terre Haute Saturday. Crawford, a 2007 Winamac grad, won the state title in the 100 meters as a senior and later won the Big Ten title in the 100 meters at Purdue before running professionally for eight years. (photo provided)

Shane Crawford was a state champion in the 100 meters at Winamac. He was a Big Ten champion at Purdue. He competed at the Olympic trials.

He ran professionally for eight years.

When you drive through Winamac, there is a sign that welcomes you to Winamac, home of state champion Shane Crawford.

His high school track career ended 19 years ago, but he set a record during his indoor career that remains to this day.

The capper to his career came on Saturday, when he was inducted into the Indiana High School Track and Field Hall of Fame at a ceremony at the Idle Creek Golf Course Banquet Facilities in Terre Haute.

It’s an extraordinary honor, but it brought out complex feelings.

“For me, I felt like my entire running career was a failure because I didn’t hit the goals I wanted to hit,” Crawford said in a phone interview. “I didn’t achieve the things I wanted to do, and so for me, I had a very hard time being honored and celebrated for what I felt was a failure.

“But I addressed it in my speech that it let me know that everything I did was worth it and that it was right. To be up there in front of everyone and to be inducted, it told me that what I did was worthy of that, you know.”

Crawford also called the honor “extremely humbling.”

“And I hate to use the term overwhelming, but I’m not sure what else I would say,” Crawford said. “That’s something you work your entire career and life for, and it kind of blindsided me, you know. It was a tremendous honor.”

Crawford held himself to a high standard. It was what drove him to succeed.

One might hear of an athlete who comes out for track to try to become faster or stay in shape for football or basketball. That is not Shane Crawford. A Michael Jordan fan, he tried basketball in the sixth grade. He also tried wrestling for a year.

Crawford, however, was built for track. He spent 12 months a year thinking about track, even running AAU track meets during the summer.

It was something he talked about with his father Paul when he was a kid. He knows that some people will think he is being too hard on himself.

But he said that it drove him to the level that it did.

“I didn’t win an Olympic gold medal,” Crawford said. “A lot of people followed me through high school. And maybe even some people followed me in college because I broke four Purdue records: I broke the 60 (record) three times, and I broke the 100 record, and I was at USA Nationals, and I was at the Olympic trials, and some people don't know that. But for me, I wasn’t an Olympian, and I wasn’t an Olympic gold medalist.

“And when I started the entire thing as a kid into becoming a young man and a man, that was my goal was to be the best, and that was it. It was to be better than everyone else, and I didn’t get that. You know what I mean? So it’s like you work something for your entire life, and you don’t get that goal. And that was why I always struggled with it.”

Crawford said his father loved running but had back problems growing up – Shane said that his dad would have had a better career than he did – that kept him from running to his potential. Paul Crawford, who later had a tumor surgically removed from his back, shared his love of running with his son. When Shane was a kid, he and his father watched the Olympics with wonderment on TV.

“Why couldn’t that be me?” Shane asked his father. “Why couldn’t I be the fastest man in the world?”

“Why can’t you?” his father replied rhetorically.

It was a conversation that always stuck with him.

Starting in track

Crawford said he had the desire to get better from the time he started running competitively.

“I don’t know if I realized I was good for a very long time,” Crawford said. “But I wanted to get better, and I had the ability to, and I also was willing to work very hard.”

But winning did not come easy.

When he was a sixth-grader, he lost every race to William Sing, who was an eighth-grader at Winamac.

The losses did not make him philosophical about losing to a runner who is two years older and maybe a little faster and stronger. Rather, the losses made him angry.

“I could not win, and again, I realize how spoiled that sounds as a sixth-grader,” Crawford said. “I’m going against eighth-graders, and you know, because of course, you’re coming into puberty, all these kids should be stomping me anyways. Well, I got second at every meet, and I was furious. I was so pissed.”

Crawford said he dealt with losing with a “poker face.”

“That was one of those things,” Crawford said. “It didn’t change as I became an adult. I just got better at hiding it.”

He remembers that once his sixth grade track season ended, he gave himself a week off and then got right back to training. He said he basically worked that schedule year-round through his senior year in high school.

“It’s such a physical sport,” Crawford said. “You have to do it all the time.”

Crawford worked on becoming stronger. Once a sprinter becomes stronger, he or she can use the starting blocks to their advantage.

Going fast indoors

As Crawford got into high school, he was ready for the indoor meets in March, and that is where he began making a name for himself.

“I think since I can look back in hindsight now, I would say when I mastered my start (and) the blocks, I would say my senior year in high school, and that’s because I broke the state record in the 55 and the 60,” Crawford said. “I think that’s part of why I got inducted into the Hall of Fame was my state record stood for 16 years in the 60, and I still have the state 55 record. So no one has been faster than me ever. And I think that’s a big part of the induction.”

He gives “massive” credit to his father for his development as a runner. The other key figure in his development as a sprinter was Winamac coach Jeff Beach, who was also Shane’s middle school history teacher.

“Jeff is extremely easy going,” Crawford said. “You know the phrase ‘cool as a cucumber?’ That is Jeff. And for all the time I’ve known him, he was always so mellow and so calm. And I’ll tell you, that’s a great thing for athletes where whether the meet went good or bad, he would kind of be that rock for you. And it’s important to have someone that’s just so even after the fact.”

Crawford said that Beach was not a typical taskmaster coach.

“Instead of him being your standard coach that barks at you and tells you what to do, his and my relationship was very give and take,” Crawford said. “You know what I mean? ‘Coach, I feel like we should do this, and he’d say, ‘OK, let’s do that.’ So that allowed me to feel out my body, and if there was a day where I wasn’t feeling good or wasn’t feeling right, he would back off. Where a lot of coaches might make the mistake, they would just push you through when you’re not feeling up to it, and then you get an injury or things like that.” 

Crawford said that the harder he worked, the more confident he became. Much of that work came in the weight room, and it always came after he ran. Crawford said he weighed 170 pounds as a senior at Winamac, and his bench press maximum was 275 with a squat of 400. In college, his bench press was 345, and his squat was 450. As a professional sprinter, his bench was 385, and his squat was 575 as he prepared for the Olympic trials.

“To this day, I do still remember my numbers,” Crawford said. “Now as a sprinter, I was still a little bit bigger than most guys I raced against. That’s not necessarily good to be heavier, so I always had to be very mindful of my diet, so I wouldn’t blow up and gain a bunch of muscle because there’s a fine line between having too much. … The running always came first.”

His rival

Crawford was second in the 100 and won the 200 as a freshman at the 2004 Rensselaer sectional.

He later started running AAU track during the summer for a team called Indiana Elite. He developed a rivalry there with his Indiana Elite teammate Devin Pipkin, who went to school at Warren Central and who was in the same grade.

Pipkin finished second at state in the 100 and fourth in the 200 in 2005 and second at state in both the 100 and 200 in 2006.

Crawford was third at state in the 100 in 2006 behind Pipkin and champion Arthur Wims of Fort Wayne Northrop. Crawford said finishing third made him “furious.”

“That was my motivator,” Crawford said. “I am not going to lose again. The pain of losing was terrible. That is agony. So many kids these days say that they hate it, but they don’t do (anything) about it.”

Wims graduated in 2006. He was an underdog to Pipkin going into the 2007 season. Crawford gave himself “three or four days” off, and he was back to work. Losing in 2006 “drove me nuts.”

“So he was a shoo-in to win his senior year,” Crawford said. “And then this (guy) from Winamac shows up senior year, and I got the state record in the 55 and the 60, so it’s like, oooh, things might not look too good for Devin come outdoor season for the state finals.

“It was such a bizarre thing because at the sectional meet of both of our senior years, he and I both had tweaked our hamstrings a little bit. So it was like, oh, boy, the train is about to come off the tracks for both of us. And the way that it ended up working is mine had recovered in time because I had dropped the 200, and he had wanted to be in both, and he ended up getting hurt again.”

Pipkin would eventually run at Indiana University. On the day that Crawford broke the Purdue record and won the Big Ten in 2011, Pipkin finished fifth.

Crawford said Pipkin reached out to him when he read that Crawford was going into the Hall of Fame. He said Pipkin was “cordial” when he called him.

Crawford reflected on what it meant to be around runners like Pipkin and other top runners at that age. They even ran together in the 4 x 100 relay at the national AAU meet.

“My junior year in high school, that was when I got to be on a team with Devin, and I got to be there with him, and it’s kind of a unique thing because it’s like these are guys that are the best in the state, and I’m here too,” Crawford said. “So it’s like, well, shoot, are they really that much better than me? Well, maybe just a little, but if I drop a tenth from my time, I could be right there. Maybe I could beat them.”

Winning state

As a senior, Crawford won the Rensselaer sectional title in the 100 in 10.88 seconds, and he was second in the 200 in 22.98 seconds.

At the Valparaiso regional, he battled his tweaked hamstring and won the 100 in a sizzling 10.68 seconds while finishing 10th and not making it out of the heats in the 200.

Not having to worry about the 200, he could focus on the 100 at state.

In the end, Crawford shot ahead and took control of the race at about the 20-meter mark.

He won in 10.51 seconds. Clarksville’s Ryan Masters was second in 10.74, and Lawrence North’s Traquincey Wilson was third in 10.75. Pipkin, compromised with a hamstring injury, finished ninth in 11.47.

Still, Crawford was worried about his own health when he arrived at the Robert C. Haugh Track and Field Complex in Bloomington.

“So it was one of those things where I’m hoping and praying I can finish the race healthy with my leg still attached,” Crawford said. “I knew in my mind had I been healthy, I wouldn’t have had anything to worry about because of the indoor season I just had, if that makes sense. But because my leg was compromised, it was like, oh, boy, let me try to execute this whole race as sound as I can, and let me gently accelerate and get to my top speed and not blow a gasket and then just finish it clean and OK. It kind of sunk in after I crossed the line because I was Winamac’s first state champion.

“And of course, there is so much work that goes into that moment, and it’s so difficult to put words to it.”

Winamac had a brief parade for Crawford when he got back home. Crawford rode in the back of Beach’s truck on a celebratory ride through town.

Crawford said Bryce Brumm commissioned the signs welcoming you to town to mention Crawford. The signs are located by Braun Industries on Indiana 119 and near Pulaski Memorial Hospital.

In addition to Crawford, the sign also mentions Winamac as being the home town of 2004 and 2005 state wrestling champion Chris Kasten.

“I was shy about it at first; for now, I’m so proud of it,” Crawford said. “Because who else has their name on a town? So I’m pretty thrilled about it.”

He capped his senior season at Winamac by running at the Pan Am Junior Athletics Championships in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

Being recruited by Purdue

His indoor times in the 55 and the 60 got major Division I schools to take notice.

“There was no doubt about it that when I got the state record for my senior year that I was on the map at that point,” Crawford said. “You can’t have the fastest and the second fastest time in the nation and not be noticed.”

Crawford signed with Purdue in his senior year at Winamac before winning the state title. Purdue coach Jack Warner offered him a “full-ride” scholarship, while other schools only offered partial scholarships. The decision was easy.

Finally healthy for the outdoor season as a senior, he got to compete at the prestigious Penn Relays, where he said he got to meet comedian Bill Cosby.

Two weeks after the Penn Relays, he ran 10.18 seconds to win the 2011 outdoor Big Ten title in the 100. That remains his personal best.

His college career ended at the NCAA regionals when he ran a 10.44 at the same Bloomington track where he won the IHSAA title four years earlier.

He received his bachelor’s degree in kinesiology.

Pro career

Crawford ran at the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials, which led to his professional career. He ran for PUR Athlete and finished sixth at indoor nationals in the 60 meters in 2013.

At this point, Crawford moved to Orlando, Fla., where most meets were within a one-to-three-hour drive. He called Florida “the hub for sprinting” because you can train 12 months a year.

He ended his track career in 2020 at the start of the pandemic.

His life today

Crawford moved back to Winamac – it’s where all his family lives – after his pro career ended. His “adult job” is as a stocks and securities trader, which he started before his retirement from running.

He has also written two fiction books and designed 17 video games based on those books.

He called writing his “first passion” as a kid, but it had to take a "backseat" after he got into track. He said he makes the games himself and said he is about 20 units away from 10,000 units solved lifetime. They are available on the online gaming platform Steam.

“They’re fantasy books, so like orks and goblins and (stuff) like that,” Crawford said. “I hate to even compare them to anything because I would not want to diminish a Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit or anything like that and compare them to my crappy books, but they’re in that realm. They’re very fantasy heavy.”

He laughs about the turn his life has taken.

“I’m really nerdy, man,” he said.

He said he takes his grandmother out for breakfast every Saturday. It’s a weekly tradition that started in 2006. He was still in high school, and  she had just moved to Winamac from Missouri.

“I will never say a single bad word about Winamac,” Crawford said. “I loved my upbringing. I love my family. I love my town. I love my state, and I love my country.

“Regardless of the issues that every one of those things might have, I will always support them and always be thankful for them.”