By Elliot Denman // Photos by Justin Gaymon

Baseball's loss was obviously track and field's gain.

"I was a pretty good catcher, " Steve Borbet tells you, looking back on his student days at Long Island's Seaford High School in the late 1960s. "Then I became an infielder. Eventually, I pretty much played everything. I always batted over 300. But I got spiked my sophomore season and lost six weeks."

And in that brief sabbatical from baseball, his vistas began expanding.

Along the way, he discovered track and field, and all the challenges the sport -- of the individual as well as the team variety -- had to offer.

"Baseball, to me, wasn't as exciting as track," he soon told himself. "In track, you had the best of both worlds."

And he's gone with that call ever since. This was the decision that would irrevocably alter the rest of Steve Borbet's life.

He went on to become an outstanding middle distance runner in high school, starred at Ohio's Kent State University, and eventually returned to Long Island to launch a coaching career that has now spanned over 40 years, and reached one more pinnacle Saturday at the New Balance Track and Field Center at The Armory.

Along with seven other legendary figures, Borbet was inducted into the Armory Coaches Hall of Fame in a ceremony that highlighted the launching of a brand new meet, the AT&T Hall of Fame Invitational, that, just as Armory Foundation President Dr. Norbert Sander predicted, proved itself a spectacular addition to the Armory's pre-Holidays schedule.

Obviously, the Borbet game plan for life worked to perfection. Check out all these coaching achievements:

By numbers alone, he is most successful coach -- any sport -- in the annals of Suffolk County. Those numbers include 39 (county team titles), 7 (national individual and relay gold medalists) and 11:33.42 (the time Bay Shore's Liz and Sarah McCurdy, Samantha Jackson and Laura Cummings ran in 2004 to set a girls U.S. distance medley record.)

Perhaps his biggest thrill, though:  Being named National Coach of the Year at the 2012 Nationals in Greensboro, the presentation coming just after his girls won the sprint medley and just before his star Jessica Gilbert won the 400 hurdles.

But his proudest number is 65 ("at last count, at least that many of my former pupils have become track coaches, too.")

For all this and more, Borbet was an obvious choice for the revived Armory Coaches Hall of Fame.

The Coaches Hall of Fame roster at the Armory had stood still for the past six years -- Bronxville's Jim Mitchell, Bishop Loughlin's Ed Bowes, Boys and Girls' Jimmy Jackson and Chaminade's Bill Carriello had been the earliest inductees -- so it clearly was time to make up for lost ground.

Thus, the Hall of Fame's membership total zoomed to an even dozen with the gala ceremonies Saturday -- first trackside as athletes, fans and friends cheered all the proceedings to mark the meet's grand opening, and then at a special gathering at the National Track and Field Hall of Fame, below the track level, where the inductees got to tell their stories all over again.

Suffern's Joe Biddy, New Rochelle's Andy Capellan, Medgar Evers' Shaun Dietz and Nicola Martial, Ridgewood's Mike Glynn, and the Saratoga Springs husband-and-wife team of Art and Linda Kranick, along with Borbet, comprised the Coaches Hall of Fame's Class of 2015.

Between the eight of them, there's over three hundred years of coaching expertise.

"I started running in the 11th grade, at Seaford High School," said Borbet. "My older brother Bob actually was in the sport before me; we used to laugh about him  running track because he was the laziest guy around.

"But all of a sudden he was breaking school records and running in the state meet. So that point I quit baseball and actually started running, too. Bob kept me going."

He set school records at everything from the half (1:57), to the mile (4:18) and two miles (the 9:40s.)

"By my own senior year, though, I was breaking Bob's records, getting down to 1:55 (for the half) and the (lower)  9:40s (for two miles.)  But Bob's mile record was too good for me.  My best was about 4:23.

"Then our younger brother, Brian, came along and he broke all our records, including a 4:15 mile.  In fact, they're still in the books."

Collegiately, the three Borbets headed in different directions, Bob to Holy Cross, Steve to Ohio's Kent State, and Brian to Fordham.

Steve's memories at Kent extend far beyond track.  The memorable May 1970 campus shootings -- by National Guardsmen on protesting students -- took place just outside his dormitory building. From competitor, his ambitions extended to a career in teaching and then in coaching.

"I'm a lucky man I've been able to live that dream," he'll forever say.

That career has included stops at Holy Trinity High School, then Bay Shore, then Stony Brook University, then Half Hollow Hills, and then back to Bay Shore.

All told, his Bay Shore coaching years -- a combination of boys teams and girls teams -- total  "the high 20's, maybe 27."

These days, he's beginning to cut back on his duties -- officially speaking, he's now just an assistant coach with the Bay Shore girls team (under head coach and former pupil Anders Borromeo.)

"I'm pacing myself," he says, smiling at the thought. "As long as they want to keep me around,  though, I'll hang around, anything they say." (Having retired in 2009 after 36 years as a health and physical education teacher.)

"My wife, Kathleen, she's a coach, too, starting about 14 years ago, with the Smithtown boys. It's been such a pleasure coaching and to be with all these great young people. They keep you young, too. Track, it's such a terrific sport.  It gets in your blood."

After all these years, quite obviously.

Every event, of course, delivered a meet record in this first edition of the AT&T Hall of Fame Invitational.

It was the mile races that delivered big early-season thrills. And a pair of seniors qualifying for the Feb. 20 NYRR Millrose Games at the Armory, too.

After just a week off -- following the cross country season -- Saratoga's Aidan Tooker blazed to a 61-second final quarter to bang out an eye-opening 4:09.38 win in the boys race. For December, this was brilliant running.

He beat a quality field -- but Tyler Cox-Philyaw of Millbrook was still a not-close second in 4:15.64.

Then it was Jessica Drop's turn to deliver a 4:55.63 triumph for Coginchaug in the girls race, with Saratoga's Kelly Chmiel, just a freshman, her closest rival in second at 5:01.34.

"That (4:09.38) was a big surprise," admitted said the Syracuse-bound and future business major Tooker, who will join the NCAA-champion Orangemen's cross country team next fall. His junior-year best was a 4:11.

Does 4:09:38 in December translate to a sub-4 in March? Or Maybe May or June?

"Not really," Tooker said about such wild speculation.  "That would be pretty amazing.

But, then again, why not?

"And it was specially cool, on the day my coaches (the Kranicks) were honored and they were right there in the middle of the track. "

"I didn't think I'd be running this fast this early, not at all," declared Drop, who made this her first big track assignment since last June -- she'd played soccer all fall.

For Drop, whose college destination is the University of Georgia, where she'll study marine science, it was the fastest mile of her life. She'd gone 4:57 as a junior.

Semi-amazing, too, was that she got to the starting line on time for the race.

"I just got there as they were lining up," she said. "So I didn't have much chance to think about things beforehand."

Well, as things evolved, that was a winning game plan, too.

Full results, race footage, interviews, photos and more here:

http://www.armorytrack.com/gprofile.php?do=view_event&event_id=11339&mgroup_id=45586&year=2015