Running changed my life.

I have only been a runner for seven years now. I only joined cross country because I was cut from the volleyball team in seventh grade and I knew some friends who ran at a different school.

Naturally, I was a bigger, slower girl, and I was actually the slowest girl on the whole team. That wasn’t too bad; runners are the most supportive people you’ll ever meet. Still, middle schoolers aren’t always the nicest, but my friends on the team kept me going. I decided to go back to the team my eighth grade year because I liked it enough and my sister was going to do it. This year was a bit rougher. I hadn’t really gotten much faster, my sister was more naturally athletic than me, and I was still the slowest. I felt like my teammates looked down on me because I was supposed to be faster as an eighth grader. I loved my coaches, but they weren’t the high school coaches, and they weren’t enough to keep my negative thoughts away. This, combined with the fact that I hated running, made it so that I didn’t want to do high school cross country. 

Luckily, my parents forced me to go to the summer runs. They forced me to go to the team events. I was not a social person and I dreaded these events before I had to leave. I cannot thank my parents enough for making me go to these things. 

I absolutely loved my freshman year of cross country. I was still the slowest on the team, but the atmosphere was so different. Every single teammate who wasn’t in my race would stay until I had finished to cheer me on; even some of the girls in my race turned around after their finish to see mine. I could not believe the support I had from so many people. I also had incredible encouragement from my coaches, and it made all the difference. I started running a 5k in 31 minutes, and in my second to last race, I had dropped that time to 27 minutes. Then, in my final race of the season, I ran my league championship 5k in 25 minutes and 51 seconds. This race changed my life. I decided right then and there that I loved running, and I was going to come back next year, and my parents were right. 

I worked so hard in the offseason to get to where I wanted to be. I played basketball (after being cut in seventh grade, but another story for a different day) and I ran track (I did hurdles and discus, for some reason). I came back the next year during summer runs and I ran with some girls in the middle of the pack, some of the girls I ran with the previous season. I was so happy and so excited that the first race of the season; I felt good, and my sister was standing on that line with me once again. When the gun went off, I felt it in that instant: something was different. I ended up running that 5k in 24 minutes. I also finished seventh for our team — I was on varsity. It took me so long to realize what I had accomplished. I had worked my butt off for so long and it paid off.

At the end of the season, I had dropped to 22 minutes, and I received the most improved award as well as a varsity letter. My sister lettered, too. Our team went to regionals, led by five juniors, one sophomore, and two freshmen. The following season, we set our hearts on going to the state meet together. 

Here’s where the story goes wrong. 

My sister decided that she wanted to run a half marathon for her birthday during the track season because she loves running so much. I thought she was crazy, but she did incredibly well for her first time and for such a rough course. We came back and she didn’t miss a beat on her training. I was mostly an 800 runner, and she was the four-event athlete that ran the 400, 4x800, 800, and the 3200. A week or so later, she started to have some issues, so she dropped the 3200, and I, for whatever reason, offered to pick it up. That was one of the best decisions — that I regretted every week — that I have ever made. I was one of two girls who ran the 3200 (so I was automatically varsity) and I hated every single step of those 8 long laps. I wasn’t great at it, but I was okay. I slowly got faster, and as I learned how to race the 3200, I slowly started to like it. End of the season, I ran the 4x800 and the 3200 pretty well, got a letter, so did my sister, everything was pretty good. 

Cross country comes around again, and my sister’s foot is getting worse. Whatever, the trainer tells her it’s something, just wear orthotics, keep running, you’ll be fine. She does that, runs some races (on varsity), but her foot keeps getting worse. Long story short, she ends up in a boot and on crutches after several misdiagnoses and treatments that made the injury worse. I ended up hurting my IT band (knee), and I wasn’t running where I should have been. It probably could have been healed and taken care of pretty quickly, but I couldn’t do it.

As my sister’s condition grew worse, so did the relationship we had with our coaches. We started to see a side of him we hadn’t known existed. It’s like he had lost something valuable (varsity runners), and it was our fault. We chose this. We didn’t want to run varsity. He just stopped talking to me like an athlete and instead just like a bystander. He told my sister to stop coming to practice altogether because she was a distraction. Even worse, he made me tell her to stop riding the buses at one point. I wasn’t going to get better this season. 

Towards the end of the season, he told my sister that, if she ran well enough in the league championship, then she could go on to run in the district meet the following week. So, she took off her boot and ran better than three of the girls in the varsity race, so she had secured her spot. I didn’t run varsity that season, but I didn’t care about that as much. We were all happy on the ride home, I was happy to be done, she was happy she wasn’t. Then we got off the bus. He told her that she wouldn’t be running at districts. She wasn’t even going to practice with the varsity girls. She was done because she “just wasn’t good enough.”

The team didn’t make it to state that year. 

At the banquet, I didn’t receive a varsity letter, but no one was expecting me to. No one was disappointed. My sister didn’t get one either — this surprised everyone. Every single race she ran in, she had run the fourth or fifth fastest time (and she ran in over half of the races). She was visibly upset (with a right to be) and we were all surprised. As the ceremony shifts to the boy's team, we see 3 additional varsity letters get handed to boys, boys who never ran in the top 9.

Nothing against these boys, they are very kind and supportive teammates, but they didn’t deserve a letter; one of them even missed the league championship because he was late, and he missed half of the practices for another commitment. This blatant sexism tore my sister apart.

Betrayed and broken, she still ran track very well, though still restricted by injury. I was in my junior year, still running the 3200 with the senior I had run with the previous year. We both ran really well, earned lots of points for our team, and secured another varsity letter. Then we prepared for what would be our final season of cross country together. She didn’t run all of the races, but she ran really well. I ran varsity, though not as fast as my sophomore year; I had lost a lot of motivation and my love for running. We both received our letters and cried lots of tears as we moved on. 

Following this season, my sister spent a lot of time in and out of the hospital. The doctors could not find out what was happening, why she was in so much pain. It got to the point that they were looking for cancer. Thankfully, it wasn’t. It turns out that it was her body getting so worked up and stressed out that she was experiencing debilitating pain. She now has many appointments to see not only see her physical therapist, but also a psychiatrist. The biggest stressor for her is our coach. And he has only recently found out that she has felt this way for the longest time. She is still in the process of recovering from this. 

As track season approached, we had another surprise: our head track coach was leaving. His own kids were entering middle school in his own district, and while he would still be teaching at our school, he was going to start coaching at their school. No one could blame him, and while we would all dearly miss him, we were all happy for him. Then we found out that a school has a special policy: when the head coach of a sport leaves, the newly hired head coach can either keep the old staff, entirely replace the old staff, or do something in between.

The new head coach brought on an entirely new staff consisting of his friends and his wife. We tried this staff out, despite having lost one of the best distance coaches we had ever had (and she was one of our teammate’s mother). The new distance coach was unresponsive to our suggestions or even how our bodies handled certain workouts. One by one, all the returning varsity runners left. I was the last one to quit, and the distance team was only comprised of new runners. 

I sometimes wish that none of this would have happened. I sometimes wish that she had never gotten hurt and that I would have worked to make my injury go away. I sometimes even wish I had never joined cross country in the first place. But then I realize the impact it has had on me.

Because I joined cross country, I introduced my sister to her greatest passion. Because of running, I am a much healthier woman. Because of my teammates, I found a love for running. 

Because of my coaches — good, bad, and even the good changed to bad — I made one of the most important decisions of my life.

Because of my running, I was offered a placement on many different collegiate cross country and track teams. I was strongly considering a school nine and a half hours away from home because I loved the coach. Then I remembered.

I had loved my high school cross country coach too. Then I didn’t. 

I loved my track coach. Then she was fired. 

No matter what I feel about a coach that has the sole job of recruiting me, he could change instantly, or move to another school. 

It was one of the hardest decisions of my life, but I decided to go to one of the best schools in the country instead of running in college. Almost a semester in, and I know it was the right place for me. 

The coach that I loved for that school nine and a half hours away? He got a better job at a different school. And that coach that started coaching for a different school? He set me up with my roommate (who I love).

Since being here, I have started to slowly find my love for running again, and it is amazing. I have lost 12 pounds, despite the freshman fifteen claiming so many others. I still talk with my sister and high school friends on a regular basis, and many are planning on coming here when they graduate, too. 

Running is truly an amazing thing, and I thank God that I suck at volleyball.

- Anonymous