Andrew Farr recently finished his junior year at GHS. He has been running competitively for about eight years, beginning in 2014 through the Gorham Youth Summer Track program.

His coach, Jason Tanguay said, “If you follow Gorham Track and Field, then you most likely know the name ‘Andrew Farr.’ In fact, many of us have followed Andrew’s success on the track since he was in middle school,” he said.

What some may not have realized, he had yet to compete in an outdoor track and field meet until this season; his 2019 season was hampered by an injury and the 2020 season shut down by COVID-19.

Farr has had much success in his track career; in the Spring of 2019, “I had qualified to compete in the 400m and 60m sprints at the Indoor New Balance Nationals. After a successful regular season, breaking the freshman 55m and 300m state records and being named ‘Most Valuable Male Junior Division Athlete’ in Maine, I was excited to see how I continued to progress throughout the postseason,” he shared. Farr was making a name for himself doing something that he loved, sprinting.

During a practice in the week leading up to Nationals, Farr said he noticed his hamstrings felt a little tight. This is nothing unusual for a sprinter so he stretched and rolled a little more than usual until he was able to convince himself that they felt “good enough.” However, about halfway through the first repetition, he said his left hamstring pain went from tolerable to excruciating.

“At the time, I didn’t know the difference between tightness and injury, so I tried to push through; my heart said, ‘go faster,’ but my decelerating legs suggested otherwise. I ended a lot more than just that workout as soon as I crossed the line,” he remembered.

“After that practice, I remember my coach telling me “you could lose a lot more than you could gain in these next couple of days if you aren’t careful,” and those words lay ingrained in my mind,” Farr said. “If I had gone into practice with that mentality, I might have been saved from pulling my hamstring and placing last at Nationals later that week,” he added.

What happened, Farr went on to explain, was a grueling eleven months of physical therapy, grief and depression that followed his injury.

When Farr pulled his hamstring again, it was at a meet in Gorham. “I can vividly remember athletes from other towns immediately embracing and comforting me, specifically Thornton Academy sprinters Isaac Ofielu and Joshua Sewell, as well as many others,” he shared.

Farr is not shy when talking about his difficulties with his injuries and his recovery. “Three months of painstaking doubt, of uncertainty, of going through the daily motions, of doing everything in my power to heal as quickly as I could. However, for the longest time, it felt as if I were working in complete darkness, reaching for a goal that I didn’t know would ever be reached: full recovery,” he shared.

Fast forward to the 2021 season; after three regular season meets, Farr broke the 100m (11.02), 200m (22.42), and 400m (49.41) Gorham High School boys outdoor track and field records and entered the state meet ranked number one in the state in all three events.