Southampton's Gabriella Arnold To Run Track At Division I Albany

As a highly regarded three-sport athlete, playing soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter and track in the spring, Gabriella Arnold knew she was eventually going to have to choose one sport for college and stick to it. The question was, which one was it going to be?

Last week, Arnold made her decision.

On April 1, the Southampton senior, surrounded by her family, which includes parents Eddie and Helen, oldest brother Eddie Jr., twin brother Saintino and younger sisters Anabella and Mia, both twins, along with athletic director Darren Phillips signed her letter of intent to run track at Division I program the University of Albany.

Although she seriously considered playing soccer in college, Arnold eventually settled on track. After all, she’s been called “Gabby 400-meters” since she was 5 years old.

“Track is my life,” she said. “I’ve been around it my whole life, and I immediately fell in love with the sport. I have been to so many camps that my dad had run, which really motivated me and has shown me that I am a great athlete, that I can do anything I put my mind to. So really, always from the beginning, I think it was always going to be track.

“To be called ‘Gabby 400-meters,’ that makes me proud of myself,” she continued. “Without my dad I wouldn’t be where I am today. I’m very thankful for him, and for my mom as well, but having my dad as my coach made me understand that I can really do anything. Track is an individual sport, and while I do love playing team sports like soccer and basketball, with track I don’t have to sit and worry about getting playing time or validation from other people. I do it because I love it, and obviously hearing my dad go on about what he did in college and being an All-American, I want to be better than him.”

Eddie Arnold, who has been the boys and girls cross country and girls track head coach at Southampton for more than two decades now, was an All-American track athlete at Millersville University in Pennsylvania. He had the tough dual role of being both coach and father to his daughter, and son Saintino during the fall cross country seasons, something he admitted was not easy and gave credit to his wife, Helen, for keeping both relationships grounded.

“She carried all five of our children and was just as close as I was with Gabriella. Mommy was always Mommy, and my wife kind of grounded me throughout the whole process coaching her children,” he explained. “It was very difficult for me at first to play both roles. When I come home from track practice, it’s hard, sometimes I want to talk track with my daughter at the dinner table and it’s hard to refrain from that, but I respected Gabriella’s space and I tried not to talk track 24 hours a day.

“But it really is a blessing being able to coach your kids in high school. Not many coaches get to do that,” he continued. “Most parents coach their kids in youth sports at the beginning of their careers, then they send them off to junior high and high school. But I was blessed to coach my daughter starting in the eighth grade and I always had a vision of her running in high school and college since we bought her a little running outfit when she was 5 years old. She’s an all-around athlete who excels in all three sports, but I truly believe track was the right choice, as it was to commit to Albany. I always knew in my heart and soul that she’d run track in college, I didn’t want to disrupt that universe, but I also knew that her experiences in soccer and basketball would catapult her in her next journey in life.”

Richard “Juni” Wingfield coached Gabby, as she’s known by family and friends, for four years on the varsity basketball team. Wingfield said he was not surprised one bit that she will be competing at the Division I level but said she is equally impressive in the classroom as she is in the athletic arena — she plans on studying social welfare and psychology. He also gave credit to Arnold for making the move from the William Floyd School District to Southampton in the middle of her school career and adapting very well.

“There is an old Rudyard Kipling quote, ‘Walk with Kings, nor lose the common touch,’ and that’s Gabby,” he said. “Like myself, she had to leave old friends behind, and she had done that in such an admirable way, she was viewed in such high regard, not only by just her teammates but all kids in the community. Gabby brings that universal appeal. She’s truly a girl that can exist by using a culturally astute common language with all the children, which is important in our school which has such a diverse population.”

Sean Zay, who coached Arnold for one year on junior varsity and then again on varsity for her sophomore, junior and senior years, was not surprised one bit that she landed on a Division I track team. When she was thinking about playing soccer in college, Zay put together some of her highlights, most of which he said was her tracking down the opposing team’s best player and playing lockdown defense, much like she did on the basketball court.

“When I had her in eighth grade, I needed her as a striker so she played up front for me and scored a bunch of goals, and that’s what stands out to me about Gabby, she’s very coachable, willing to do whatever you ask,” he explained. “If you asked her to lockdown their fastest girl, don’t let that girl beat you, she’ll do it. There were only a couple of girls who could keep up with her. She loves to compete, wants to win every single game. If I had a whole team of Gabbys I’d be psyched. She’d run through a brick wall for you.”

There were a number of programs interested in bringing Arnold in. Her father’s alma mater Millersville was one. The University of Bridgeport and Bryant University, among others, were all interested, but Albany was Arnold’s No. 1 choice pretty much from the get go, and it had some advantages the other schools did not. For starters, Arnold visited the school and loved the big campus and environment and liked the fact that it was in state. She also felt everyone she met at the school was nice, and she has a good friend and former Southampton teammate, Dreanne Joseph, already competing on the Albany track team.

But what put Albany over the edge was Albany’s director of track and field and women’s head coach Roberto J. Vives, whom Arnold compared to her favorite high school coaches in her own father and Wingfield.

“The coach is absolutely amazing. He’s the sweetest guy I’ve ever met and really reminded me of my dad and Juni,” she said. “He showed me how he was going to help me grow and showed a real interest in me. The Bridgeport coach was also very lovely, nice and respectful, but Albany just really stole my heart.

“Albany being a Division I school was really secondary at the beginning of the whole process. That really wasn't on my mind,” she continued. “I wanted to see what offers I got first, see how I’d feel, talk to my parents. My decision had nothing to do with if I was good enough or not. I just wasn’t sure if that commitment was there. But after talking to a few people and going over things, I realized it was there, and now I’ll just go there, do my best and grow as a person and an athlete.”

Eddie Arnold and Roberto Vives share a commonality in the fact that they both coached their children at high levels. When the two met, Arnold felt very comfortable sending his daughter to Albany.

“It’s important who holds your child and where you’re going to send your child off to college because you really don’t know who is going to hold your child, either in the classroom, the dorm rooms, particularly on the track team, but when I shook the coach’s hand, I got this very, very warm and confident feeling that this is the right place for Gabby,” he explained. “He talked about his own children, shared personal stories about his children. We shared very similar stories and we spoke for a good 40 minutes, but when he reached over and said, ‘Gabriella Arnold, we welcome you to our family,’ … there was no question this was the right place because that’s what I consider my teams. That’s what I call my cross country and track teams, my family.”

Having not had a full track season since 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all parties involved talk about Gabby’s potential for growth in track, and the thought is that she hasn’t even scratched the surface in her ability yet.

“Gabby will learn that everyone is determined in a D1 program. The kids that don’t make it at the college level couldn’t come up with that determination, that will to succeed, but Gabby has shown she has that,” Wingfield said. “Gabby has this incredible ability to act from her heart. In all my years coaching student-athletes, they have a real a problem acting from their hearts and souls instead of their egos. Coming from a place like William Floyd gave Gabby a sense of belonging, helped her gain a greater perspective and gave her great balance and an incredible ability to handle any type of victory. She’s never someone to complain or blame, always had courage to tell me something that I needed to be told, and kids like that have the ability to handle things with a great deal of modesty. Win, lose or draw, she is a great leader, and there’s so much room for personal growth and evolving in sports, no question. Gabby is the epitome to me of such determination through her own family, because she’s worked so hard being from a family of five, I know there’s never any given and there is only one certainty is that we always find our strength. To try and go for that particular success that really transcends certificates and plaques, rather you get the joy out of knowing you honestly dedicated yourself to personal excellence. That’s what I hope she takes with her.”