HIDDEN GEMS: Declan Keenan’s Physical & Mental Strength Propels Him To Unprecedented Heights

Written by Kaley Brown '23
- ECGulls.com Contributor

There are far more hidden gems than shining stars in team sports. While praise and recognition almost always gravitate towards the student-athletes who receive the most playing time, those who truly understand team sports know that student-athletes don't need to be on the field, court, ice, or competitive surface in order to make an impact on the game. Team success is dependent upon the sum of its parts — not the contributions of a few individuals. The goal of this column, Hidden Gems, is to tell the stories of Endicott student-athletes who may not receive the most playing time, but who are still outstanding and exemplary in their own right. They're the student-athletes who shine in the shadows and find their fulfillment in team success. These student-athletes are the hidden gems of Endicott Athletics.

BEVERLY, Mass. – Resilience is a word that Declan Keenan '21 (Durham, Conn.) embodies.

The definition of "resilience" is as follows: 

"The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness".

As a student-athlete and as a professional, Keenan has experienced all kinds of adversity throughout his college career. He prides himself on being able to overcome obstacles and keep a positive attitude. 

This is just the beginning of what makes Keenan a hidden gem.

RIDING THE WAVE

As an avid runner since he was in middle school, Keenan has continued his passion in college as a member of the men's cross country team for four years. However, his collegiate running career has seen no shortage of struggle.

Keenan has dealt with injuries throughout his entire running career, even before he got to college. His most recent and most impactful injury came during the winter of 2018 during his freshman year. Keenan developed patellar tendonitis in both of his knees. 

Patellar tendonitis refers to inflammation of the patellar tendon. The patellar tendon connects the kneecap and the shin. If this is not treated quickly enough, it can lead to a bunch of tiny, but mighty, tears in the tendon, which is what happened to Keenan.

"It felt like someone had stabbed me in the knees," said Keenan.

In the winter of 2018, Keenan was essentially overtraining and overrunning without physically preparing his body for it. This meant that his knees were not ready for a full schedule of training and running for the spring semester at school with the cross country team and the athletic program's coaches and trainers. Keenan compared his lack of preparation to jumping into the deep end of the pool when you should only be walking step-by-step into the shallow end.

Keenan's knee injuries as a freshman put him on a painstaking path of over 14 months of physical therapy in hopes of getting his body into form to compete again as a cross country runner. Keenan was finally in "return-to-play" shape in July 2019. 

Since then, his injury has calmed down and Keenan has seen improvement since his diagnosis over three years ago. Regardless, Keenan is going to deal with patellar tendonitis for the rest of his life.

"I feel like an old man now," he said. "When it rains my knees will hurt."

After missing nearly his entire sophomore season due to his injury and only competing in one race that year, Keenan had to find a way to cope with this life-changing obstacle in his way. Keeping the word "resilience" in mind, paired with around 250 hours of total physical therapy, got him in a place where he was mentally and physically able to run competitively and to the best of his ability again.

Over a year into his recovery, Keenan's orthopedist advised him to consider any other form of exercise from running.

"And I took that personally," said Keenan, Michael Jordan-esque.

What did Keenan do?

He continued running.

Keenan achieved a personal record (PR) in October 2019 at Keene State College in the fast-paced 8-kilometer race (32:57.8). In the following month of November, Keenan achieved another personal record at Roger Williams University in the Commonwealth Coast Conference (CCC) Cross Country Championship in the 8K race (32:23.04). 

Keenan was thrilled to get not one but two personal records, but he was far more ecstatic that he was even able to run competitively again after over a year of grueling physical therapy that felt impossible to overcome at times.

"And," he said, "I got to prove my orthopedist wrong!"

COMING TOGETHER

It's easy to recognize that Keenan had, and still has, a wonderful support group behind him in his teammates and his coach, Spencer Lange, while fighting his injury. 

"It was great to see Declan back out in the jersey and have things come together after such a significant amount of time away from consistent training," said Lange. "The best feeling as a coach is to see when someone has a breakthrough in their performance and you can see everything they went through to get there."

On top of the crucial support Keenan received, the cross country team overall created an extremely special culture over the course of Keenan's collegiate running career that he was excited to lead as a senior on the course.

Because the cross country team is so small and because the sport's end goal is different compared to that of football or soccer, the individuals who make up the squad are able to customize it in a way that works best for everyone. Instead of viewing being on the cross country team as strictly an extracurricular, when Keenan was in his first two years with the team, his elders started to shift the way the team operated.

"We started viewing this group of people a little bit more as a family and less of a club," said Keenan. "It really became something that was oriented around not just being a cross country team on the course, but being a team in every other part of our lives, being there for each other for support, and for academics."

One of the leaders of the team's cultural shift, Will Connelly (Barrington, R.I.), is a close friend of Keenan and has been for four years. Connelly was a class above him as he graduated from Endicott last year.

Connelly is one of Keenan's biggest supporters as both an athlete and as a professional. Connelly witnessed him tough out patellar tendonitis and felt inspired by Keenan's comeback from what could have been a career-ending injury for someone else.

"It still resonates in my mind a year and a half later," said Connelly. "Declan is the kind of person where you know exactly what you're going to get with him every time. He's a straight shot with the right ideas and mindset and that's something I've always admired about him, running or not."

After competing in the Fall 2019 race season and feeling good about his physical health, the COVID-19 pandemic tragically called off fall athletics in the CCC in 2020. Regardless of the fact that there was no competition, the cross country team still practiced and trained here and there despite there being no real chance of having a season. 

Despite it all, Keenan has been an integral part of the team's culture as a leader in 2020-21. The team has been able to focus on the small victories, not on scores and results. This has immensely helped the team grow a unique bond even though they were unable to run competitively last semester.

"It was definitely not the note I thought I would end my almost 10-year cross country career on," said Keenan. "While it might not have been athletically perfect, it was a really good personal culmination of a lot of the lessons I've learned from cross country."

POSITIVITY IN FAILURE

Keenan's decade-long running career has consisted of lots of failures, and he's okay with that. Keenan has learned to look at failure in a positive light and use it as a learning tool not only through running but also in other aspects of his life.

"Cross country has helped me immensely accept the fact that the low points can be the best points because it's the start of something better," he said. 

The term "resilience" is something that goes hand-in-hand with both running and Keenan's double major in psychology and political science. However, in the last couple of years, Keenan realized that he has a passion for college admissions. Working at Endicott's Office of Admissions in the summer of 2019 and being a tour guide for almost two years aided in this discovery. Connelly was the one to recommend Keenan as a good fit as a tour guide two years ago when the Office of Admissions needed some extra help.

In the first couple of years of Keenan's college career, he wanted to be a lawyer. He completed his first internship at a solo practitioner law office in Connecticut and did not enjoy the experience, to say the least. Let's just say Keenan didn't find zoning law and real estate planning all that thrilling to work with.

By the time he was completing his second internship, Keenan had declared his double major of psychology and political science. He then interned at the State of Connecticut's Appellate Court and found it interesting, but didn't necessarily connect with what he was doing. He knew he wanted to work in a different type of environment and with different material.

Finally, Keenan interned with Doherty, Cella, Keane, & Associates, a nationwide social security and insurance law firm located in Beverly. While the work was a lot of administrative and office tasks, he thoroughly enjoyed his time there and is currently working there part-time as a claims and legal assistant. He enjoys the work environment, the kind of office he works in, and the people he works with.

His internship with Doherty, Cella, Keane, & Associates along with working in the Admissions Office and being a tour guide has solidified Keenan's occupational desires once he graduates.

"The team-oriented dynamic environment is exactly the kind of workplace I want to be in," he said. 

Keenan's experience in the Office of Admissions has translated over into the rest of his life. Being a tour guide means possessing a special spark that not many people have within them and connecting with total strangers. Keenan's first time meeting with a prospective student and their parents was painfully awkward and he wasn't sure how to approach them. 

It's evident that Keenan has leaped over this learning hump and excels as a tour guide on campus.

Keenan's confidence in public speaking through being a tour guide has translated over to cross country the way many other attributes from being a runner have transferred over to the rest of his life. He is even more comfortable speaking at cross country team meetings. Keenan used to have a lot of anxiety in team meetings especially if both men's and women's teams were present, which would total between 30 and 40 people in the room. He was afraid of saying the wrong thing, offending someone else, or asking a dumb question. 

Today, Keenan doesn't even think about these things anymore. As a senior and one of the cross country team's primary leaders, he is confident in his leadership skills and being able to express his thoughts and opinions freely.

NEXT STEPS

At the time of our interview, Keenan mentioned that he got a bad grade on a test that he had studied hours for in a difficult class. He highlighted that his positive mindset about the poor test grade can be attributed to the way he has approached failure as a cross country runner in college. He has a lot of good homework grades in that class and knows that he will do better on the next test. 

Keenan has learned how to be a resilient person from cross country. He learned how to keep his head down and wait until he can get out of whatever situation he is in and focus on opportunities he can use to better himself for the future.

"The idea of viewing things that might be objectively bad as subjectively good is something that has stuck with me through cross country," said Keenan.

Despite all of the obstacles Keenan has had to climb during his time as a collegiate cross country runner and as a student at Endicott, his resilient nature has brought him within just a couple of weeks of graduation.

Keenan has already hung up his spikes and put away his resistance bands. Keenan and Coach Lange decided upon fall 2020 athletics being canceled that it would be best for both parties if Keenan ended his competitive running career. Keenan has still been heavily involved with the team and continues to foster the culture they have created over his career at Endicott.

As a senior, Keenan has been able to put even more focus on being a tour guide due to not running this past season. Keenan is going to continue his education as a graduate student here at Endicott's Van Loan School. Keenan is looking to work in college admissions once he receives his MBA.

Though Keenan's collegiate cross country career did not go according to plan, he will leave The Nest (as an undergraduate) with invaluable life skills that he wouldn't have without experiencing the hardships he did. 

His physical and mental resilience has launched him into places he never would have imagined if he didn't possess the mindset that he does.

And that is what makes Declan Keenan a true hidden gem.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Keenan wanted to shout out Coach Spencer Lange, fellow senior teammate Sean Stoeppel, Endicott national dance champion Emily Booth, Endicott's Associate Director of Admission Allison Heenan, and Endicott's Assistant Director of Admission Joe Flynn.

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(Photo Credit - David Le '10)