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Saturday, May 13, 2023, TRIB-LIVE
Eric Burnett wasn’t an athlete who was highly coveted by the Pitt track program. Once Burnett found his way to Pitt, he attempted to walk on to the program twice before earning a spot on the cross country team as a senior.
What kept Burnett, who was chosen as a member of the 2023 Fox Chapel Sports Hall of Fame Class, pushing forward were the people who wouldn’t let him stay on the sidelines.
“It’s a simple answer,” said Burnett, who graduated from Fox Chapel in 2004, about why he kept trying out. “They had such a great distance team. When you try out, you all train together. Those guys kept encouraging me to come out for the team. Without them, I would have likely thrown in the towel.”
Burnett ended up staying for a fifth year when Pitt offered him a scholarship after one season as a walk on. Former Pitt coach Jim Trautman, who coached Burnett and also served as a coach at Ball State and Robet Morris, said it was difficult to forget Burnett’s persistence.
Even without being able to benefit from the coaching of scholarship athletes, he stuck to the program.
“That’s the most memorable thing about him,” Trautman said. “There are a lot of memorable things. We have a strict limit on the amount of athletes we could have. Most kids would have moved on to something else. I don’t know how he was able to stick to it and do the workouts on his own, but he proved us wrong and made the team.”
Thanks to Trautman’s influence, Burnett stumbled onto another love, triathlons. After graduating from Pitt, Burnett won the USAT Sprint Triathlon national championship in 2011. He was also named the speedster of the year by the LA Tri Club in 2012 and was the club’s athlete of the year in 2013.
“It’s a long race and that’s three different races you have to master,” Trautman said. “That takes an amazing amount of discipline. You are doing a lot of that on your own.”
Burnett struggled with injuries in his right leg throughout his career. At one point, Burnett said he was a step away from having a stress fracture.
However, when Burnett got to Pitt, the coaching staff got him involved in cross training.
Trautman said getting athletes involved in cross training is common.
“You look at every person individually,” Trautman said. “A lot of kids benefit from cross training. The stress from running once people get to college is cumulative. It puts a pounding on your body. To get through the college workload, cross training helps take some of the stress off the body.”
Burnett, who now owns his own business, was honored to get the call from Fox Chapel to be inducted into the hall of fame. He earned eight varsity letters in high school.
“I was a little surprised, because most of my accomplishments came after high school,” Burnett said. “I qualified for WPIALs a few times, but my accomplishments in high school weren’t outstanding. I didn’t win a state championship or anything.”