There are scholar-athletes and then there are scholar-athletes. Benson Edman, an East Hampton High School senior who effectively swept the athletic and academic awards given out here recently to the class of 2025, is probably as good an example of the term as you can find.
And he is personable too, as may be gleaned from the fact that he captained the boys cross-country, winter track, and spring track teams this school year. “In all of the four years I’ve coached him, he probably missed only one practice without an excuse,” Kevin Barry said, adding that “Benson’s a true Ironman — he keeps super busy, with sports, his school work, the orchestra, the band . . . his work ethic is unparalleled.”
He grew up riding a bicycle in the environs of Cedar Point Park (his mother having wisely followed the advice of a city friend to buy a house out here when he was very young) and playing soccer with friends, but at the East Hampton Middle School, urged on by Steve Redlus, Nick Finazzo, and Rich King, he began to get into running.
“I never thought of running as a sport, but the timed miles we ran in Mr. Redlus’s gym class and our runs around the par course up at the high school were competitive, and I took to that. Everyone in middle school wants to be the fastest. Liam Fowkes and Mikey Gilbert were really fast. I wanted to catch up to their times, but I couldn’t. It usually would be them, then me, in the middle, and then everyone else. . . . My mother ran cross-country in high school, but she didn’t push me. Though if I want to do something, she’ll support me. She was happy I began running.”
The pandemic hit when he was in eighth grade, but he said he managed to navigate the academic and athletic changes it imposed. “I may even have benefited from it. I had a circle of friends who I talked to remotely, Coach Redlus gave us virtual workouts, I ran in the park, I kept up with my homework. . . . I know a lot of kids had problems during that period. . . . I was lucky.”
Yes, he said, he is a long-distance runner (in life too, presumably), though he might well have added some foot speed had not Covid intervened, the absence of spring track having stunted his growth in that regard, said Edman, a self-confessed perfectionist.
When told perfectionism might be both a blessing and a curse, he smiled. “Well, it’s true that if I don’t do my best, I feel unsatisfied. I do want to give it my all. I felt sad that I slept through our 6 a.m. beach run last fall. I love those preseason practices. It’s the same with music. . . . I’ve struck a fairly decent balance, I think. Sometimes I get stressed . . . knowing that I’ve done the best I could is what matters.”
He agreed that being as perfectly imperfect as one could be was worth the try.
As for long-distance running: “It requires a lot of discipline and a certain mentality — you don’t give up. You may be hurting 24/7, but you fight through it.”
Sticking with it has also played a part in Edman’s musical life. “When you’re in the early grades here, they ask you which musical instrument you’d like to play. I chose the violin, a cool instrument . . . there are a lot of solos for the violin. I started playing it in fourth grade, along with 30 other kids. Now, there are only two of us, me and Ariel Garcia.”
“It’s very difficult to play the violin,” Edman continued, “you almost have to do it by ear. There are no frets like you have with a guitar. Then there’s the bowing, the articulation. Intonation — getting the notes right — and articulation.”
He was, in the end, thankful, he said, that the school orchestra’s conductor, Stephanie Quigley, had pushed him to be evaluated by the New York State School Music Association when he entered the high school. He was pretty nervous going into that trial by fire. The judges were scary, and his solo certainly wasn’t perfect, but he had scored all right.
“I had a sense of accomplishment that I did it,” Edman said, “and, consequently, I stuck with it. I’m happy she made me do it.”
He played the bass drum at homecoming last fall and two years ago at homecoming he played the cymbals.
As for his awards, “It’s very reassuring to have the work I’ve put in appreciated,” he said. “I’m very grateful for that.”
As for life after East Hampton High, he intends to major in mechanical engineering and minor in music theory and composition at the State University at Binghamton.
“Mechanical engineers do a lot of things . . . they work with robots and robotics . . . systems and stuff. . . .”
“They do things that benefit people?”
“Yes,” Edman said. “There’s a guy, Boyan Slat, who’s making robots to clean the ocean, trapping plastic while not trapping the fish. I love that.”
