KNOX — Ray Gilman sits sprawled out on the couch in his parents’ house in Knox.

Though he appears comfortable, he is uncomfortable talking about himself and injuries and illness that have haunted his career as a member of the track-and-field team at the University at Albany.

Gilman, a Berne-Knox-Westerlo High School graduate, is coming off the best year of his young athletic life, but he’s still on the long road to being fully recovered.
"It was a pretty good year for me," Gilman said with a modest tone. "I just wonder what could’ve been. I missed half the indoor season. I came back early from mono and I had some issues with my feet."

But there is more to Gilman’s story than just fighting off mononucleosis and foot problems. He was recovering from an injury before the mono set in and sat him down for half of the indoor season.

Gilman came back and, without much practice during the season, won the America East Conference Championship in the triple jump and earned a spot in the NCAA Eastern Regionals.
"Ray has been one of those athletes that is a pleasure to have on the team," said UAlbany’s head coach, Roberto Vives. "He is a hard worker. He loves to be on the team. He has come through and been very competitive and to win the conference championship with a jump of over 49 feet is amazing."

And this was after missing the entire year before.

It was the winter break during his sophomore year when Gilman went to help his 86-year old uncle repair a second-floor deck and fell down a set of steps.
"I went down the steps and smacked onto a deck," Gilman said. "I got up but my mom said we might as well go to the hospital."

And it was a good thing he did. Gilman had ruptured his spleen, and, though doctors left the organ in, he spent a week in the intensive-care unit.
"He didn’t know where he was," said Gilman’s mother, Debbie. "His coach said he wanted to see Ray for awhile and said he would stay for an hour. He ended up staying for four."

Gilman had to miss his entire sophomore campaign while recovering from the accident and, when he was about fully recovered, he started feeling the effects of the mononucleosis.
"Last summer, I wasn’t sleeping well and not eating right," Gilman said. "I went into the pre-season [in September] and the doctors told me I shouldn’t do anything. I didn’t have a pre-season. So I’ve had to catch up with everyone. But I might have come back too early. I’m still not quite right.
"I missed almost all of the first semester just working on trying to get healthy," Gilman added.

Gilman came back after the new year but still did not feel right.
"I struggled a little," Gilman said. "But I didn’t want to miss anything. You work toward the end of the season so you peak."

While Gilman was out, he traveled with the rest of his teammates to meets and helped out where he could. And, when he came back, he could not find the energy to practice and could not work on technique.
"After practices, I would go to bed," Gilman said. "I wouldn’t eat"Then I started to have foot and leg problems. It was from coming back too early. I had to get orthotics."

Gilman said a high arch and coming back from the mono led to the foot problems. Though he might have been rested for meets.
"I would go to the meets and be fresh," Gilman said. "I think that helps me.
"If I rest over the summer," he added. "I should be fully healthy."

Potential

And that is another part of the story. Gilman, his parents, and his coaches feel there is more that Gilman can accomplish.
"He has a lot more potential," Vives said. "If he’s healthy for his senior year, he can come back and jump. He is just scratching the surface of potential. He can go 51 feet in the triple jump. The school record was set in 1991 and is 50 feet, 6 inches. He has a
chance to break it."

The adversities also gave Gilman reason to do well.
"I missed the beginning of the year and that gave me more motivation to do well," he said. "I knew time was running out."

And he had success throughout the season.
"It is nice to get a personal record at every meet," Gilman said. "I want to know that I was consistently able to score and be ready to pop one out there. I should hit 50 feet. I have all next year and the year after that."

Gilman started feeling good in jumping near the end of the indoor season.
"During indoors, at the IC4A’s I finished seventh in all the east," he said. "It was pretty exciting and going to Puerto Rico and competing there was great."
"We kid him a lot," said Gilman’s father, also named Ray. "But he has a lot of drive in him. He wants to do well. We felt bad because of what happened to him. He was getting good.
"Next year, he’ll be hitting 50 feet and be great for years. He had been second in the America East but he finally got by his teammate and he’s going for a repeat next year."

Support

Gilman directly works with UAlbany’s assistant coach, Nadir Simohamed. Gilman can’t wait to work with him even more and learn from someone who has coached some of the top jumpers in the country.

Their bond goes even deeper.
"We would joke around," Gilman said. "I’d be hurting, and he’d say ‘Then why am I even out here"’ He expects a lot out of me. But he knows what’s going on."
"The coaches told me that Ray’s a special kid," Gilman’s father said. "Each opportunity, all season, that Ray needed a rest they gave it to him and it wasn’t a problem."
"The day Ray came home [from the hospital], Coach Nadir called and asked if he and some other coaches could come up," Debbie Gilman said. "They came up and most of the men’s and women’s team came up as well. They ordered pizza and hung out. There were so many people here you couldn’t see the walls."

From the moment Gilman signed on a scholarship to join the Albany program, his family became part of a larger family.
"Everybody loves to see you," the elder Ray Gilman said. "We travel to events as much as we can. They just love to see you. You feel like a part of a group as a parent. The parents are having fun."
"I know, when you’re not at a meet," the younger Ray Gilman said, "everyone asks where you are."

The family atmosphere is what attracted Gilman to the University at Albany when he decided he wanted to try to be a Division I athlete.

Ace in academics

Despite the rigors of participating in a Division I sport and the difficulty of overcoming his adversities, Gilman has done well in his classes. He has finished the work for his minor in business and is working on finishing up his dual major of criminal justice and psychology.
"It’s a lot of work," Gilman said. "You don’t realize until you start traveling. But my professors understand. I don’t think I’ve ever taken a test on the right date."
"He goes to a D-I school and is in the top of his event," Debbie Gilman said. "He still came through with his academics to have a good grade-point average. He’s done well in school."
"A lot of my friends say to me that you must go to school and party," Gilman said. "But I love that I am able to expand on the sport I love to do at a high level. At times, I wish I could be a normal student."

Gilman’s natural ability was seen from an early age. As a child, he was always jumping around and causing damage to himself or to the house, his parents said.

Gilman started jumping competitively in high school.

Debbie Gilman recalled, raking the jump pits and helping Coach Bill Tindale.
"One day, Tindale said, ‘Hey Gilman, you try that,’ referring to a jump. Ray did it, and no one had seen that before," his mother recalled. "Everybody had a look in their eyes of, ‘Oh my gosh.’ Then people came to see him jump."

And now jumping is what Gilman does and what he loves to do. It is who he is and provides an alter ego to the quiet, modest kid he is before he gets a foot onto the triple-jump runway.

But why does he do it"
"Because I can," Gilman said. "It’s something I always could do. I could always jump and then I would show off to my friends and do flips. So I just tried the triple jump and do what I do best in a positive way. And I guess I won out at the end. I found what I could do and I am doing something positive with it."