The Making Of A Steeplechaser
6/20/2007 12:00:00 AM | Track and Field
June 20, 2007
EAST LANSING, Mich. - Sophomore Sarah Price was one of four athletes who traveled to the recent NCAA Championships in Sacramento, Calif. Her road to the Championships, however, was not what she expected. From the beginning of her running career as a 400-meter runner, she never saw the 3,000-meter steeplechase and the national meet in her future. But, the track and field staff could see something in the young runner that she never saw in herself - and now she is one of the nation's best in a race that never crossed her mind.
Price began running in seventh grade, but really as something to fill the time after competing in volleyball during the fall and basketball in the winter. Her mother had run track, so she was naturally drawn into the sport. She began her track career as a 400-meter runner, which eventually led to the 800-meter run because of her success in the one-lap race. By the time she reached Loyola High School, she was running the mile. Her sophomore year, the Mankato, Minn., native's coaches convinced her to give the two mile race a chance.
But at times, she wondered why she continued to run.
"I really hated it at some points," Price said. "I think my sophomore year of high school I thought `Why do I do this?' It made me want to quit just thinking about the upcoming season and I would get so nervous."
Despite her reservations, Price had been a four-time all-state and all-conference honoree by the end of her high school career. The kinesiology major finished third in the state in the 3,200-meter run as a senior, clocking in at 11:04.
Her energy turned to choosing a university that would be both affordable and far enough from home that she could become independent. A pleasant phone call to associate head cross country coach Rita Arndt-Molis gave way to Price becoming a Spartan and entering her first season as a cross country runner.
"My high school actually didn't have cross country," the sophomore said. "The year that I moved to my high school, Loyola, they had just lost cross country that year because they had to cut a few sports; they kept trying to get it back but they didn't get it back until the year after I graduated. I guess I'm used to running long distance - cross country is a little bit longer but everyone I knew who had ran track said cross country was a lot more fun. So, when I came here, she (Arndt-Molis) knew I had never ran cross country but she saw I had a lot of potential. She asked me if I would you be willing to run cross country and I said sure. I always heard people say it was really fun and it's better than going around in circles."
In her first season as a Spartan, Price excelled in her new sport. It wasn't until the outdoor track season that she found success in an unlikely race.
When the outdoor track season came around, Arndt-Molis asked Price if she would give the 3,000-meter steeplechase a try because the coach felt that she could qualify for the NCAA Regional Meet. From what Price had seen of the event, she didn't think it would be too hard, so she gave it a try.
What the then-freshman didn't know was that the steeplechase is an incredibly physically demanding race. Along with running 3,000 meters, participants must leap over 28 30-inch barriers and seven water jumps that that extend 12 feet after the steeple.
"I thought, `Oh yeah I can do it,' and I just convinced myself it was going to be so easy that I forgot how it was hard it was really going to be," Price said. "Once I started racing I realized how hard it was. Now that I look back on it, that was the worst steeplechase race I ran in my life. I remember the last two laps of it I was dying, I wanted to stop."
She finished her first race in 11:39.71 and had a fourth-place finish, but did not qualify for the regional meet. Impressed with her performance, and with a little help from her fellow steeplechaser and roommate Nicole Bush, she gave the race another try.
Her first race of the 2007 outdoor season was at the Colonial Relays in Williamsburg, Va. She surprised herself after posting a personal-record 10:52.91, just seconds short of a qualifying time.
"I didn't have any expectations at the Colonial Relays because I just wanted the race to feel good," Price said. "So, I ran it. When I finished, I realized I was a second and a half off a regional qualifying time. I thought, `Wow it didn't feel hard, it felt good, and I almost qualified.'"
The following weekend, at the Spartan Invitational, she surpassed the regional-qualifying mark with a 10:46.20 and a second-place finish.
"[Arndt-Molis] said I was going to run it again sometime before Big Tens, but I didn't know when," the sophomore said. "Well, it turned out it was next week at the home meet. When I ran it again, all I could think was `Please just qualify,' because I don't want to try it twice and be really close. Bush, paced me and I qualified by four seconds. All I could think was that I'd qualified, and I don't have to keep trying to get it."
At the Big Ten Championships in mid-May, she improved her time again. This time she ran a 10:33.23 and finished in eighth place.
With the regular season behind her, Price had to concentrate on completing the Mideast Regionals in the top five spots to receive an automatic bid to the NCAA Championships, a meet that only three Spartans had participated in the year before. The sophomore was seeded ninth in her race, and on paper, it was not projected that she would make it to the national meet.
Halfway through the race, she was within the top five spots.
"I was pretty excited going into that last lap," Price said. "I had no idea where the fifth-place girl was, all I knew was I had passed her. I was looking at the girl from Wisconsin. I told myself to just run. I didn't want that feeling when I was coming down the straightaway that there would be other women that decided to kick harder than me because they wanted it more. I wanted this more."
Price ended up finishing the race in a personal-best 10:22.17, taking 11 seconds off her previous personal record, earning a fourth-place finish. Bush and Price were the only Spartans to automatically qualify for the national meet in Sacramento, Calif.
"It was a really good feeling when I crossed the finish line," she said. "I had put in a lot of hard work that finally paid off. I knew there was still another step to go, but that was one step I wanted to make and put behind me."
Price took her first step towards a very promising career with Michigan State track and field on a path that she never thought she would take.
Price finished the 3,000-meter steeplechase heat in 11th place, 21st overall, with a personal-best mark of 10:20.87 at the NCAA Championships. She improved her personal-best time in each of her last four races this year.
Players Mentioned
