Benefield: Healdsburg High grad, Cal State Stanislaus thrower makes foray into Scottish Games

The next time a storm blows down a tree in your neighborhood, you might consider calling Gary Randolph. Or should you need a field cleared of smallish boulders, call him. In fact, if you need anything bizarrely heavy lifted and launched into the next area code, go ahead and call Gary Randolph.

The Healdsburg High grad can throw anything. And he can throw if far.

Randolph is the top thrower at CSU Stanislaus with school records in the hammer and discus, and he's an emerging talent on the Scottish/Highland games circuit where events are similar to those found in track and field, albeit with a distinctly medieval flair.

Sheaf toss? That's where athletes throw heavy bags filled with burlap or mulch over a cross bar with a pitchfork. Caber toss? Picture a 100-to-180-pound trimmed tree that is launched for both distance and accuracy. Weight for height? Athletes use one hand to toss heavy weights up and over a cross bar behind their heads.

But where Randolph really shines is in the hammer and the “stone puts” (think shot put).

“He's got the goods,” said Ryan Vierra, Randolph's coach at Stanislaus and a five-time World Highland Games champion.

“He's throwing further than most pros,” Vierra said.

And he has only just started.

If it seems like dreams of making it on the Scottish Games circuit are a tad unusual, that fits. Randolph's ascension in track and field has been atypical.

A football player in high school, he didn't take up track until his junior year. His impact with the Greyhounds was immediate. Randolph made it to the North Coast Section Meet of Champions in discus in his first year of competition.

“I really liked it right away,” he said.

Randolph won the Sonoma County League title in shot put and discus his senior year and made it all of the way to the CIF State Track and Field Championships in discus.

And that's where his track career came to a seeming end.

Randolph went to Sonoma State, where there is no men's track team. After a year, he transferred to Santa Rosa Junior College, where he competed for the Bear Cubs his first year but redshirted his second - a time period he spent under the tutelage of SRJC throwing coach Jan DeSoto.

DeSoto, a former track and field All-American at Sacramento State who competed in the 1984 and 1992 Olympic Trials in the hammer, broke things down for Randolph into parts - a slow progression of building blocks. It was not a pace that Randolph was used to.

“It was just a lot of technique. You had to go really slow through things,” Randolph recalled. “It was really hard for me because I'm like 100 percent all the time. It's really hard for me to tone things down.”

As a redshirt, he couldn't compete. He'd just train. And that wasn't easy either.

“It was really hard,” Randolph said. “It felt like you were going to practice every day just to go to practice. It didn't feel like you were working toward anything even though you are. It was weird. But it was good for me, I got a lot better.”

And the gains he made caught the attention of Vierra at Stanislaus.

“He was relatively raw,” Vierra remembered. “It was an unknown. He had some good talent and I know he was working with Jan for a year. I knew he had the skill set, he just needed being in a program where it was solid fall training. ... We both committed and here we are today. He's really taken off and he's one of the top throwers in the NCAA.”

At the NCAA Division 2 finals last spring, Randolph finished sixth in the hammer, seventh in the shot put and eighth in the discus.

Added payoff for Randolph's diligent drill work, especially in the relatively unfamiliar hammer throw?

“I don't get dizzy anymore,” he said.

And that's a minor miracle.

To watch a skilled hammer thrower is to see the intersection of speed, strength, balance and timing. And to watch it go wrong is cringe-inducing.

“The hammer is my favorite just because I have gotten better at it every year, “ Randolph said. “It seems like that is one I have the chance to excel at. Discus you have to be really tall, shot put you have to be really big, like 300 pounds. I'm not that. But hammer? All sizes throw really well.”

Vierra has seen such improvement in Randolph that he's encouraged the student to enter various Scottish Games competitions. The purpose is two-fold. It keeps Randolph focused on training for specific events, but it also keeps him working out for the three events he's hoping to make a run in at the D2 championships next spring.

And, for Randolph, the Scottish Games are just flat-out fun. At what other time can you don a kilt and huck a telephone pole?

“It's actually a lot less stressful,” he said. “It's a lot more laid back, a lot less rules. In NCAA track and field they have all these rules that you can't do this, you can't do that. At Scottish Games, everybody is laid back. It's a festival.”

But after his run through summer Scottish Games competitions, Randolph will fine tune his focus on next spring and the NCAA championships.

The fact that Randolph competes - and succeeds - in three events in NCAA competitions is a testament to his athleticism, according to Vierra. Most athletes at that level focus on one event, one skill set, one progression of moves.

Randolph attacks all three - the shot put, discus and hammer.

“It's rare. Very rare,” Vierra said. “I believe more introduction to other skills helps you be a better all-around athlete. I don't usually make that decision for the athletes. I let them make their decisions on that.”

But it's with the hammer that Vierra thinks Randolph can make the deepest run in the NCAAs.

“I think that is one that he has the chance to become national champion next year. He has the feeling for it,” Vierra said. “Some athletes don't have the feeling for it. He picked it up.”

Pick it up he did. Now he just wants to see where it can take him.

“I'm going to do this for as much as I can and see what I can do,” Randolph said.

You can reach staff columnist Kerry Benefield at 526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com, on Twitter @benefield and on Instagram at kerry.benefield. Podcasting on iTunes “Overtime with Kerry Benefield.”