Bruins’ Gamwell ready to run for Bulldogs

There’s no telling exactly how many miles Nolan Gamwell has run at and around Beddingfield High in his four years as a student, but the experience got him to where he wanted to go.

For one of the newest Beddingfield graduates, Gamwell’s dedication as a runner for the Bruins cross-country, winter track and outdoor track teams paid off with a scholarship offer to run year-round at Barton College. Gamwell signed his National Letter of Intent to run for the NCAA Division II Conference Carolinas Bulldogs on Friday, June 7, a day before graduating with his senior class at Beddingfield.

Gamwell’s next step in his running career came about from the persistence of Barton head coach Tim Foster. Gamwell, a top-five student at Beddingfield who earned a spot on the Farris & Thomas Law Academic All-Area team as presented by the Times, had other options, including a chance to run at Div. I UNC Wilmington as a walk-on.

“I got accepted there but I was, like, you know what? Maybe it’s a little too expensive,” Gamwell said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “So I changed it to ECU and as a final resort, I reached out to the coach at Barton because I really wanted to run in college. If I attended ECU, I was going to try out for the team, but I ended up contacting the coach at Barton and the same day he got an offer to me. So I was like, You know what? They want me here. I want to be on a team that wants me, and I would love to continue running past high school.”

The son of Crystal and Corey Gamwell of Stantonsburg, Gamwell said that he had been contacted by Mount Olive, the reigning Conference Carolinas champion, but it didn’t come with an offer for athletic money.

“Besides, that’s where my rival is going!” Gamwell said with a laugh about his perennial “nemesis,” James Cabrera of Spring Creek, who signed with the Trojans.

Gamwell, who plans to major in history, earned a pretty nice package through athletic and academic monies, including the PeeWee and Myrtle Owens Scholarship that will pay up to $7,000 for four years as well as the Trustee Scholarship from Barton.

“So it’s looking like almost a full ride,” said Gamwell, who spent most of his time at Beddingfield on foot.

As a three-season runner, Gamwell never really took days off, earning the respect of his teammates and coaches for his dedication.

“I would say that’s a good way to describe him, is just dedication,” said Bruins track coach Ben Ellis. “He loves to do it, he loves to get better at it and he’s real competitive… He’s exactly what you want in a distance runner, because he’s competitive, but he kind of channels that and also trying to beat himself. You know, that’s kind of a big part of track, especially distance guys. You want to always go to beat your best time or your best mark, and you’re always kind of striving for that. He kind of epitomizes that. And he takes no days off. I mean, even on days where we’re not practicing, or it’s off season, you’re going to catch him out here running somewhere around the school or around the track.

“He’s definitely a guy that he just put in so much work on his own. No surprise to anyone that he got a lot better at it and has the opportunity that he does right now.”

Gamwell estimated that he’s run more than 4,200 miles during his four years at Beddingfield, including summer training.

Gamwell said that he didn’t start running until he was in sixth grade at Speight Middle but that each of his older brothers, John and Cameron, had run for one season each at Speight and Beddingfield without notable results. Gamwell himself didn’t produce any notable results as a freshman during the COVID-shortened 2021 spring cross-country season. There wasn’t even a track team at Beddingfield that year as the small school struggled to recover from the pandemic shutdown. But when he qualified for the NCHSAA 2-A cross-country championship meet, the only male runner from Wilson to do so, as a sophomore in the fall of 2021, Gamwell realized he might be onto something.

“You know, I was sick the week of regionals, but I still ran,” he said. “And I ended up cutting, like almost a minute off my time from what I had been running in conference. And I ended up making it to state. I was like, you know what? Maybe I can actually make something of this.”

He qualified twice more for the state 2-A cross-country championships, including the 2023 race in which he completed the 5-kilometer course in a personal-best time of 18 minutes, 0.32 seconds. Gamwell was pretty much the entirety of the Beddingfield boys cross-country team last fall but still carried the Bruins to scores at the regional and state meets.

As a senior, he won the 2-A Neuse 6 Conference outdoor championships in the 1,600 and 3,200, defeating Cabrera in the process, something he could rarely do in cross-country.

Gamwell also ran the 800 and on the 4×800 relay. He even jumped in as an emergency replacement for the Bruins 4×100 relay at a Neuse 6 meet and they still finished second, Ellis said.

“I always knew with the boys that I could look down during every meet and knew we were going to have at least have 20-plus points because of one guy,” Ellis said.

Gamwell said that he expects to run the 1,600 and 3,200 for Barton’s indoor and outdoor track teams as well as the 800 and other distances if needed. While he was relentless in his training at Beddingfield, Gamwell intends to step it up a notch this summer as he heads into the fall cross-country season at Barton.

“I think with training over the summer and actually enlisting the help of one of my older brothers, who is a nutrition science major, I’m going to try to get more fit than I ever was in high school and try my best to really fit in on the Barton cross-country team when fall comes,” he said.

Gamwell said that he hopes to help the Bulldogs move up in the Conference Carolinas pecking order in all three seasons. Barton didn’t have enough runners for a team score in the Conference Carolinas men’s cross-country championships last fall and finished 10th out of 11 teams at the indoor championships and ninth out of 12 at the outdoor championship meet this spring.

“I like being a team player, and I have been for like, the past four years at Beddingfield, so I would love to see if I can help move that placement up a little bit,” Gamwell said.

Ellis thinks he can, for just that reason.

“He was just a good team player,” the Bruins coach said. “Obviously, really good at what he does, but just overall just a great guy, great kid, great student, everything.”