On your 'Mark', Get Set, Go!

Mark Halpern has always been quick on his feet, but the past year-plus for the Fair Lawn resident has been a whirlwind.

Last year, Mark was selected to compete in the 2011 World Summer Games in Athens, Greece.

In June, he set off for the Mediterranean with Team USA for a two-and-a-half week journey that culminated in an Olympic silver medal in track and field.

Tuesday night the in Fair Lawn.

All that success and the accompanying adulation might get to an average man's head, but not Mark. He’s special.

Mark, 29, was one of 7,000 athletes from more than 180 countries who competed in this year’s Special Olympics World Summer Games, the world’s largest sporting event for people with intellectual disabilities. This year’s Games were held in Athens over a 10-day period from June 25 to July 4.

In Athens, Mark earned a silver medal in the 800 meters with a personal best time of 2 minutes and 45 seconds. He also placed sixth in the 400 meters and fourth as a member of Team USA’s 4x100-meter relay team.

Mark’s road to the summit of sport for special needs people required superior athletic skill coupled with a fair amount of luck.

A first place finish at the Summer Games in Trenton, N.J. three years ago gave Mark entrée to a statewide tryout for the U.S. National team last year. The national team is chosen on both skill and a coach’s determination that the athlete can live independently in a dorm away from their family during the Nationals competition.  If an athlete is deemed satisfactorily self-sufficient, he is then subject to a lottery that ultimately decides whether he’ll travel to the Nationals.

Mark was one of six track and field athletes from New Jersey – two male, four female -- who made the trip to Lincoln, Neb. for the Nationals last year.

It was in Lincoln that Mark learned he’d have a shot at the World Games if he finished first in any one of his four individual races. He wasn’t about to take any chances.

“After the third gold medal, they asked me if he thought that he had to win four in order to go,” said Mark’s mother Judy Halpern, grinning.

But Mark still wasn’t in the clear. Team USA caps the number of athletes that each state can send at seven, and slots the Olympic events that individual states will supply.

“New Jersey was supplied with the middle distance male runner’s spot, which Mark qualified for,” Judy said. “The person who ran with him, the other male athlete, also placed gold for his individual meet. But he was a shorter distance runner and New Jersey did not get the short distance male runner slot.”

Mark started competing in Special Olympics at age 10, when he was recruited to play for a local basketball team because of his height. He picked up track and field soon thereafter and has been doing both ever since.

Judy applauds Special Olympics for keeping Mark healthy and instilling him with self-confidence.

“Special Olympics provides such a wonderful opportunity for people like Mark and any other athlete,” she said. “Just providing additional social opportunities as well as the sports aspect.

"The six people that he made friends with when they went to the Nationals a year ago, he sees them in Trenton once a year for the summer games," she continued. "It’s so nice to see them get together and talk to each other, see each other. Those are all people he would have never met if he hadn’t gone on to the Nationals.”

In addition to track and basketball, Mark bowls, plays volleyball and swims.

But track and field, Mark says, has always been his best sport.

To train, Mark takes daily walks around his block for about an hour and then runs around the block for the equivalent of a mile. Many days, he also rides an exercise bike and does Dyna-Band stretches. 

When Mark was training for Greece, Judy would accompany him to the track after she got off work and on the weekends. In the winter, they frequented the indoor walking track at the .

Even though Mark had always medaled at the annual New Jersey games, Judy said it wasn’t until the Nationals last year that she realized just how outstanding he was at running.

“In the relay race, he was the third runner to obtain the baton,” she recalls. “When they gave him the baton, the team was in fourth place. He managed to pass everyone in that 100 meters and hand the baton to the anchor who brought it home for the gold. It was just amazing. He just passed them one after the other.”

Since Mark doesn’t compete in any winter sports, he’ll have to wait four years before staging a return bid to the World Games. In the mean time, he said he’ll continue playing sports and competing in local, state and -- if he qualifies – national-level track and field events.

But just as important to Mark as any Olympic medal is his independence.

“I want to move out and live on my own,” he said, when asked about the future.

Judy said that Mark would love to live more independently but it’s a slow haul in New Jersey. The waiting list for a group housing spot is long – about 8,000 people – and Mark is currently around 3,000 on the list. Judy said she knows people who have moved out of state because they’re so frustrated with the wait, but that in general, state social service agencies have been helpful.

Right now, Mark is taking an independent living course twice a week to ensure that he’ll be ready to live on his own when the time comes.

For the past eight years, he’s been working in packaging at the Friendship House in Hackensack, where he commutes daily via Access Link. Once a week, Mark takes computer classes and hopes to eventually slide into a clerical job.

“I always say I don’t know how far he’ll get in life, but we give everything a try and we don’t have a time table,” Judy said. “He has the ability to learn and is healthy physically. There’s a lot of things he can do.”

Winning an Olympic medal is only one of them.