SAN FRANCISCO – Julie Shaw’s wide smile was a bright as the All-West Region medal that hung from her neck. To her, the heavy metal was as light as a feather. She was pain free and enjoying the fruits of years of hard work despite numerous injuries and frustration. She was standing where she was meant to be Saturday – on the podium at the NCAA West Region Cross Country Championships awards podium.
Shaw, a fifth-year senior in the Chico State cross country program, ran perhaps the best race of her long career to finish eighth at the NCAA West Region Cross Country Championships and help lift her team to a second-place finish Saturday at the aptly-named Speedway Meadow in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.
By finishing among the top four teams, Shaw and the Wildcats advanced to their 11th straight NCAA Championship event. That race will take place in Evansville, Ind., on Nov. 21.
Tori Tyler battles fends off an Alaska Anchorage athlete.
Chico State’s other senior, Tori Tyler, led all Wildcats across the line in sixth place overall. But an upstart Alaska Anchorage squad that Wildcats Head Coach Gary Towne admitted was likely the favorite to win Saturday, placed three runners inside the top five and bested the defending regional champion Wildcats by a 35-58 margin. Seattle Pacific finished third with 75 points behind two-time defending individual National Champion Jessica Pixler’s individual victory. And Western Washington finished fourth with 121 points, grabbing the region’s fourth and final NCAA berth.
Alia Gray (13th) and Kara Lubieniecki (15th) joined Tyler with back-to-back All-Region honors. The top 15 finishers earn the distinction. Freshman Paige Henker, whose race Towne described as “huge,” wrapped up the Wildcats’ scoring in 16th place. Shannon Rich finished 21st and Alyssa Flores came in 83rd in the 161-runner field.
Like Gray, Lubieniecki and Tyler, Shaw’s All-Region honor was her second as well. But her journey to number two has been a long one, filled with so many twists and turns tha some of them are hard to fathom. After finishing 14th at the 2005 Regional Championships as a true freshman – an effort that she admits was “probably a bit over her head,” Shaw dealt with her first of many frustrating setbacks. She sustained a major hip injury while working out on the track when a dog ran on to the track and tripped her.
After battling back from that ailment as a sophomore, Shaw’s parents called her on the morning of the National Championship race to let her know that her brother-in-law had gone missing in Iraq. And last season, after getting off to an amazing start on the track, she had an emergency appendectomy that ended her season.
Finally healthy for the cross country season, Shaw took a chance by redshirting in order to be as prepared as possible for one last chance to do something special with the 2009 Wildcats.
It’s a move she certainly does not regret.
“This is all just so cool,” said Shaw after proudly posing for a photo with her All-Region medal around her neck. “This is it for me. Now I only have one race left. So I’m just having fun because I have nothing to lose.”
Perhaps it was that attitude that gave Shaw and the Wildcats the courage to attack the course harder than they normally would.
Freshman Paige Henker passes an SPU runner just before the finish line.
“I knew today would be hard. That’s the fastest I’ve ever gone out, and it was really hard,” said Shaw. “But I didn’t feel like I was going to die or anything.”
“We knew we had a good enough team that we could take some chances to try to win and still get in (to the NCAA Championships) if things didn’t go well,” explained Towne. “So we went out harder than we normally would. We needed people to really put themselves out there to try to break up that Alaska pack. But they got out very fast and held their positions in the top 10.”
“It wasn’t our best race of the year, but even if we had run our best, I don’t know if we would have beaten Alaska today.”
For a while after their race Saturday, before and during the men’s race, the Wildcats wore their feelings of disappointment in the form of tears and pained expressions. The team had come up just short in their search for a second straight regional title and the program’s fourth in the last six seasons. But before long, the reality of Shaw’s accomplishment, and perhaps even a thought or two about revenge at the National Championships, had them grinning and enjoying the moment.
“Sure, it’s a little disappointing, and you can see that in some of their faces,” explained Towne. “In a sense, it’s definitely good that the bar is set so high for our program that second place feels disappointing. But then again, we’re very thankful. In a lot of respects, this was a great day.”
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