Luke Anthony can come across as a typical 16-year-old. He tackled his father, John, at a Christmas tree farm in Preston recently, for instance, the start of a playful wrestling match which wound up with John painfully straining the intercostal muscles in his rib cage.

A junior at East Lyme High School and The Day's 2020 All-Area Boys' Cross Country Runner of the Year, earning that honor for the second time, Anthony can also just as easily address the difference between outcome-based goals — winning and losing, which he doesn't much concern himself with — and process-based goals.

Anthony takes his training, focused now on triathlons since the end of the high school season, very seriously.

"This is where champions are made," Anthony said in a recent conversation regarding the challenges of barreling through a high school cross country season which was interrupted on more than one occasion by the coronavirus.

"I'm in a little bit different position just because of triathlons. That's basically my main focus at this point, using the different running seasons to add to my triathlon. When it comes to race time, this training is going to show the most. The big gains are going to be made now, during our base mileage. The icing on the cake will be when outdoor (track) starts and you get to race. But this is a slow grind. If you don't do this, you're not going to perform at your best."

Anthony fell in love with cycling when he was younger. He competed in Newton's Revenge, a 7.6-mile cycling race up Mount Washington in New Hampshire with a climb to 6,288 feet above sea level, when he was 10.

As a freshman at East Lyme, his father, a former standout cross country runner at Norwich Free Academy and the University of Hartford, asked him to try running, too.

Anthony has since been a part of two Eastern Connecticut Conference and Class MM state championship cross country teams at East Lyme and has been the Vikings' No. 1 runner two years in a row. He also joined the high school's swim team a year ago to try to improve the part of the triathlon with which he most struggles, the swim.

He came in fourth in his age group in 2019 at the USA Triathlon Youth and Junior National Championships in West Chester, Ohio, and finished the year as an All-American. This year, Anthony spent the better part of September living in an Airbnb in the Salt Lake City, Utah, region, attending his East Lyme classes virtually prior to the high school cross country season while training with renowned triathlon coach Wes Johnson, the founder and head coach at Balanced Art Multisport.

Anthony met Johnson at a USA Triathlon Select Camp last year in Boston, leading to both Anthonys, Luke and John, beginning to train out of Utah under Johnson. (John is a former two-time qualifier for the Ironman 70.3-mile World Championship).

"I just reached out to him and asked would it be possible for me to come be a part of your team," Anthony said. "He invited me to a camp in the summer, kind of a test run to see if I fit in well with the team. It was my first time being on an elite squad. I was being surrounded by gold medalists, multi-national champions. There's nothing negative I can say about the team.

"When I was 9 years old with cycling, I just always pushed myself at whatever I was doing. When I started cross country freshman year, I wanted to become better. The constant want to become better ... I love training. I love what I'm doing on a daily basis. I love putting it together."

Anthony said that his older sister, Maddie, who attends the Hartt School for music at the University of Hartford, has the same type of dedication he has only for singing.

"Guitar, piano, trumpet, she's getting into the flute a little bit," Anthony said of his sister. "Anything that produces a note, she wants to get into. She loves helping kids out. She wants to be a music teacher or get into music therapy. Maddie is taking on a similar mindset (as me). It's the Anthony mindset only Maddie put that toward music."

John Anthony said that while he would describe himself as a Type A personality, operating at a more urgent pace perhaps, his wife Jennifer is "very down to earth and just practical; I don't think I've ever seen my wife stressed out," he said. John believes that Luke and Maddie are a combination of the two.

John calls spending time training with Luke a gift.

"We go on a two-hour training ride and we don't have to say anything," John said. "We just understand. He's got a real mature interface."

But John has never demanded that Luke follow in his footsteps competing in triathlons, just that whatever he does, he does with appropriate focus.

"I told him, 'Obviously, you don't have to do this. You could hang it up tomorrow and nothing was lost. You could go into photography. None of it would be a waste,'" John Anthony said. "He needs to make the choice day-to-day, week-to-week, year-to-year. It's 100% his deal. If he said, 'Mom and Dad, I really feel like I want to do track (instead of triathlons),' it's easy to say, but I wouldn't bat an eye. I would say, 'I wonder who wants to buy our bikes?'"

Because of issues related to COVID-19, the East Lyme boys' cross country team raced just four times this season, finishing 3-1. An Eastern Connecticut Conference regional meet, originally scheduled, was canceled due to the virus, as were the state championship meets at Wickham Park, denying the Vikings a chance for their fourth straight state title.

Anthony raced three times, winning all three, capped by an individual victory against rival NFA on Nov. 4 at Mohegan Park in Norwich. Anthony set a course record in 16 minutes, 37 seconds. He later earned Connecticut High School Coaches' Association all-state honors.

Anthony has always loved the camaraderie that the high school season brings.

"It's a lot more fun when you have a group of kids that's all a great group of kids," Anthony said. "It's great to watch the team culture grow. Everybody on East Lyme has always been super-motivated, always pushing each other to the next level. We thrive under those circumstances.

"If we were all doing this individually, we wouldn't see the same outcome."

v.fulkerson@theday.com