By Jim Hague
After graduating from nearby North Arlington High School, Michael Peralta didn’t know what he wanted to do with his future.
“I had no idea what I wanted to pursue as a career,” Peralta said. “A lot of my friends from high school decided to go to Rutgers-Newark, so that’s where I went. I was going to be with my friends.”
Peralta’s friends also decided to go out for the track and field team.
“Funny story,” Rutgers-Newark head cross country and track and field coach Juan Edney said. “He was one of the group of kids we recruited from North Arlington, but he didn’t even want to come out for the team. His friend talked him into it.”
Peralta’s friends didn’t last long with the Scarlet Raiders.
“They decided that it wasn’t for them,” Peralta said. “But I wanted to stick with it. I had this strong family feeling right away when I came in as a freshman. I liked that feeling.”
Peralta knew that he wasn’t the most talented runner. He also was strictly a hurdler, but had to develop into a distance runner, as per Edney’s strict rules.
“When he introduced himself to the team, he said that he was a 110 (meter) hurdler, but he did the intermediate (400 meter) hurdles on the side,” Edney said.
As Edney has it, plain and simple, if you want to participate for the Scarlet Raiders in track and field in the winter and spring seasons, you have to run cross country in the fall, just to build up strength and endurance. It’s just Edney’s way.
Peralta was willing to make that sacrifice.
“I wasn’t the most talented runner,” Peralta said. “But Coach Edney treated me equally, just like everyone else, just like I was one of the fastest guys. I liked that. It showed he had a lot of faith in me.”
Although Peralta said that he was a hurdler, he always had a fondness for distance running going back to his days at North Arlington.
“I loved cross country, so I didn’t mind,” Peralta said. “I liked the aspect of starting on the same line with my teammates and running together.”
So when Peralta was a freshman, he was determined to be a competitor with the rest of the Scarlet Raiders.
“I trained crazy hard to get a spot on the cross country team,” Peralta said.
But simply put, Peralta wasn’t strong enough to earn a spot on the roster.
“He’s such a quiet kid,” Edney said. “He didn’t say anything about it, but I could tell he was really hurt by it.”
“A lot of people get nervous as freshmen,” Peralta said. “I wasn’t nervous. I just wasn’t good enough. But it put me in position to be on the team.”
Right away, Edney enjoyed Peralta’s positive approach.
“In my 26 years of coaching, Mike Peralta is the most pleasurable kid I’ve ever worked with,” Edney said. “He’s never said ‘No’ to anything. He works hard every day. When he didn’t make the team as a freshman, it just made him work harder. He never missed a practice. He never missed a workout. He never had an attitude. Every morning, he comes into my office and gives me a big hug. He’s the most enjoyable kid I’ve ever had. There’s never any drama with him whatsoever.”
Peralta’s best time for the 5.1-mile cross country course was around 32 minutes.
“He worked all summer long to get better,” Edney said. “Most kids get summer jobs and concentrate on that. Mike did his running and then did weight training. He knew he needed to get his body stronger.”
Peralta spent a lot of time in the offseason working with former Scarlet Raider standout Roland Ying.
“He just kept getting better and better,” Edney said. “Chris Happel coaches the distance kids and he could see the difference in Mike.”
“I did a lot of distance running,” Peralta said. “I felt that I was getting stronger. I realized that if I stayed active through the summer, then it would carry into the fall and then the winter. I set little challenges for myself, like with guys on the team.”
One of Peralta’s closest friends on the team is fellow junior Clarence Smith.
“I told Clarence that I was going to beat him,” Peralta said. “It was just for fun, but I felt I was getting so much better. I trusted what Coach Edney said, trusted the program. The results were somewhat overwhelming. It was actually shocking at first. I just wanted to get better.”
Peralta’s times have improved by more than seven minutes. He’s not ready to take on the world, but he’s much more competitive than he was as a freshman.
“Some couldn’t do the workouts, but Mike stuck with it,” Edney said. “He understood that it takes hard work to get better. He did his miles. I can’t say enough about him, where he once was and where he is now.”
Edney loves Peralta’s internal drive.
“Sometimes as coaches, we can’t see what’s inside someone’s heart and their desire,” Edney said. “All we see is the physical stuff. Mike is old school. He’s not taking the easy way out. He makes us all proud. He makes me want to get up and come here every day. He makes me feel 1,000 percent better when he walks through the door into my office. If the whole team was made up of kids like Mike Peralta, I’d be a happy man. I wish they were all like him, because he’s such a great kid.”
Peralta is a marketing major at R-N. He just changed his major to marketing, so he has a little bit of work to do, but as we have learned, Peralta is not afraid one iota of hard work.
“I’m not 100 percent sure of what I want to do, but I’m glad I made the move,” Peralta said. “I’ve had my ups and downs in college. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that I work harder than most, that I have a lot of heart and desire. I like that. Right now, I’m getting a great education and I have a good shot of starting next year. That’s all I can ask for.”
Of Peralta’s high school buddies that enrolled at R-N three years ago, only Ryan Duffy remains.
But Peralta has made enough of an impact on the Scarlet Raiders’ cross country and track and field teams to make up for the loss of the others.
There’s one other aspect to Peralta’s career. He’s no longer a hurdler, either 110 or intermediate. He’s strictly a distance guy now. It’s been just as good of a move for him as it has been for the entire Rutgers-Newark track family.
