"What's up Harrison?"
This phrase can be heard with nearly machine-gun frequency as Harrison Till strolls through the Gothic Wonderland. The remark comes from persons of all plights, from a 5-foot-4, 110 pound freshman, to Shelden Williams, the 6-foot-9, 245-pound center on Duke's top-ranked basketball team. Harrison lives in a Cheers-like world where everyone really does know his name.
Popularity can be expected for someone like Till, a thrower on the track and field team and the newest long-snapper on the football squad. Till personifies the word jovial, always smiling, happily concerned with the daily lives of nearly everyone around him.
"He's an amazing person," said men's basketball player Shavlik Randolph, who is Till's unlikely but appreciative roommate. "Anyone who knows him will say he's an amazing guy. His hospitality [is] towards everybody. He treats everybody like they're the most important person. It doesn't matter who you are, he can make you feel like a million bucks."
While his amiability cannot be denied, there is also a fierce inner-toughness in Till. Though it may come as a surprise that a person that can be so nice can also be so brawny, Till's rugged traits are nothing short of a necessity in his bid to be a two-sport athlete in the academically intense environment of Duke University.
While most athletes gradually learn the focus it takes to achieve success at a high level, Till's development can be traced back to the summer months between his junior and senior years of high school.
Through the guidance of legendary fitness coach Joe Carini, Till enrolled in a summer boot camp dubbed Camilion Training that taught training tactics similar to those of the Navy Seals. While the Navy Seals have been romanticized in films and novels, Camilion Training was the farthest thing in the world from fun and games.
In the year before the Wayne, N.J., native traded his summer vacation for military training, Till had gained over 50 pounds in an attempt to bulk up for Wayne Hills High School football team. Longing to play football at his father's alma mater Ohio State, Till was doing everything possible to add the necessary strength to achieve his dream.
"I was just obsessed with trying to get recruited for football," Till said. "I was 6-foot-1, trying to gain weight. I would eat whole packages of cottage cheese at night. I got to 6-1, 265. I didn't put weight on the right way."
Although he gained mass, recruitment letters did not exactly come in waves.
"My high school football coach and my athletic director both said, you'll never be a Division I athlete,'" Till said.
Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania eventually desired Till's services on the football field, but he soon began to realize that his dream of becoming an All-American football player was fading. Just as this window was closing on Till, another one was opening. After he quit the basketball team in order to pursue indoor track, Till began to excel at the hammer-throw and the 35-pound weight throw. He soon realized he needed to trim down his substantial girth if he was going to improve in his new-found talent. Till felt Camilion Training was the best way to improve himself into the athlete he desired to be.
"I recommended the boot camp because of the simple fact that I felt that's what he needed to do to get over the hump," said Carini, who trains many NFL players at his Four Seasons Fitness Gym in West Patterson, N.J.. "He could focus on what he needed to do [at Camilion Training]."
Though Till went to the camp with life-long friend and current West Point football player Joe Palantino, the two-sport star was far from comfortable in the first days of the training.
"The first day all these kids were giving Bloods and Crypts signs," Till said, as many of the those enrolled in Camilion Training were juvenile delinquents trying to mend their ways.
Needless to say, Harrison's mother, Debbie Till, was not exactly gung-ho about the entire situation.
"I didn't want him to do it, but I wasn't going to stop it if he wanted it bad enough," Mrs. Till said, proving her motherly instincts were intact.
Though the instructors pre-empted any gang violence by stressing the lessons of team work, the regiment was far from easy-going.
The troops would rise at 5 a.m. and begin a three-mile run at 5:30. Each teenager that did not make the run in 22 minutes would be forced to run another three miles later in the evening.
After breakfast, there was a class on marine life, and then obstacle training to enforce the concept of teamwork. Following lunch, the students listened to a motivational speaker.
"You had to line up and stand stiff and listen to the motivational speaker for two hours," Till said. "He walked up and down the line screaming in your face. I was never a selfish kid, but it really made you think about spending more time with your parents and your grandparents because they're not always going to be there for you. It made you think, do you want to be smoking up your whole life, you want to be drunk, or do you want to sign that letter of intent and make your parents proud?"
Till and his classmates would eat dinner and have a chance to call home from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., which was immediately followed by two hours of "rec time."
"They call it rec time which is where they took you into a sand pit," a not-joking Till said. "One at a time you had to go in there and box. They gave you head gear and a mouthpiece and gloves. You had to go barefoot in a sandpit and box some people."
After taking a beating, the Camilion Training class would bond by joking in the showers about the intensity of the work-outs.
The schedule remained the same every day of the week, including Sundays, and the same meals were served every day over the three-month training session.
When Till entered Camilion training, over 300 people were in the program. By the August graduation date, only 110 teenagers remained. After Till finished the program, he had new-found confidence.
"His self esteem grew so much that he was able to accomplish something so challenging," Mrs. Till said. "Just the way he stood, I realized it was a good thing."
Soon after Till signed a track and field scholarship to Duke. Till has not disappointed in his time at Duke, as he is one inch away from the all-time Duke record in the 35-pound weight throw.
"He really wants to knock the hammer and 35-pound weight throw over for [track and field head] Coach [Norm] Ogilvie," Harrison's father Peter Till said. "Harrison is deeply indebted to Coach Ogilvie."
In addition, Till has decided to join the football team after spending time with some of the gridiron players while rehabbing an injured knee at Duke this summer. The active sophomore soon grew nostalgic of the camaraderie of being on a football team, and though he loves track and field, throwing is much more of an individual sport.
"He apparently has a very, very big kinship with a lot of the guys on the football team," Peter Till said.
Till has combined the work-ethic he developed at Camilion Training with his glowing personality in football, as well.
"He's in there all the time even though he doesn't have access [to the Yoh Football Center]," current Duke long-snapper Mark Thompson said. "He's always waiting outside the building. He's probably the most outgoing person I know. He takes time to give handshakes and give bear hugs even while being a really intense worker."
Because of his two-sport status, Till's days typically begin at 6 a.m. and don't end until 11 p.m.. Despite this stressful schedule, Till still maintains his contagious smile and magnetic personality.
"I love the kid," Carini said.
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