Continuing their successful run

A sight you're not likely to see often: a team of high school athletes sitting on the campus green studying together at the end of the day.

Unless, perhaps, you had the fortune to witness the goings-on of the 1998 Marysville-Pilchuck varsity girls cross country team.

It was a team that took running and academics seriously, evidenced by a 4A state championship trophy that year — still the only state team title in school history — as well as an Outstanding Academic Recognition Award from the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association for a team grade point average of 3.8.

“We were a pretty dedicated bunch of girls,” said Heidi Larsen-Ludeman. “We were all heading in the same direction. We knew we were going to college and we pushed each other to get our school work done.

“I don't think any of us attended one Friday night football game. We missed out on some great high school moments, but we always had a cross country meet the next morning. We were in this sport to win.”

So committed were they to their studies that after school each day during cross country season, they had about a half-hour before practice began and would come together on the campus lawn with their books.

Even when they went on the road, they'd bring their homework with them. Once before a meet, they were poring over their studies when a coach from another team walked by. As M-P runner Melissa Phillips-Hagedorn recalled, he told his athletes, “This is what you guys should be doing.”

Several years after all of those M-P runners graduated, some are still hitting the books hard. One of them, Camille Connelly, the top M-P runner at state in '98 (eighth in team competition), completed medical school at the University of Washington in June and is currently engaged in a year of research in the orthopedics department at the University of Cincinnati.

Monica Rodkey-Falconer, who was a freshman on the '98 team and didn't run at state, graduated in June from medical school at Wayne State University, then began her residency at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

Mari Hayman, the third M-P runner into the chute at state, completed her masters degree in journalism and Latin American Studies at New York University in May. Still a runner, she has also done a bit of hoofing around the world, having taught English in Japan, Brazil and Uruguay.

Charissa McPherson-Steyn, the seventh M-P runner across the finish line at state, is living in Johannesburg, South Africa, with her husband Michal Steyn, where both teach at a Bible school part-time. She is also completing her masters in counseling from Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va.

Sharell Thompson, who graduated from Washington State in 2003 with a bachelor's degree in pre-veterinarian animal science, is in the final stages of earning an AA degree in nursing from Everett Community College.

“I love to learn,” Thompson said, a vast understatement.

The coach of the M-P team, Julie Coburn — or “Coburn” as she was and is still affectionately known to her runners — pushed her charges to excel in both the classroom and on the cross country course. But she stresses that when she got them, they were already disciplined, self-motivated students and all she did was “help foster what was already there.”

What was already there was a strain of intense competitiveness running through a group of young women driven not only to win on the racecourse, but to outdo one another in the classroom, whether they realized it or not. “I think we were,” Lizzy Sebring said, when asked if they were competitive in their studies, though she felt it was kind of an unspoken thing.

Their desire to learn didn't end with high school. Seventeen of Coburn's top 18 runners went on to graduate from college, their degrees ranging from medicine to engineering to political science to comparative literature to laboratory science to international studies to primate behavior and ecology, and on and on.

Some, for the moment, have put on hold careers outside the home and are stay-at-home mothers, as noble and challenging an undertaking as there is. When she was running for the Tomahawks, Maren Stevens-Kearns — who has a degree in English, business management and dance from Brigham Young — considered her teammates a “second family.” Now her primary family includes a husband and a 20-month-old son.

Another stay-at-home mother until recently when she took a part-time job as a restaurant manager was Jocylin Duce-Byron, who got married after high school and now has two sons, 7 and 8. Duce-Byron ran cross-country only to get in shape for basketball, her first love.

Despite her lukewarm feelings for the sport, Duce-Byron had the second-highest finish of M-P runners at state. “She was a gritty runner,” Coburn said.

Gritty wouldn't be the adjective to describe Coburn, but caring would be. In speaking with every one of these women, you come away convinced that Coburn had a definite impact on their lives, even today, 10 or more years after they graduated from high school.

A couple of women described her as a surrogate mother. Jessica Common, the fifth M-P runner to finish at state, credited her with much more than that. “Coburn taught me to be tough,” said Common, who recently married and is currently a medical technologist at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett. “If I had a side ache, she'd push me to run through it. If I hadn't been pushed, I would have gotten into trouble. I always told people she saved my life.”

“A great role model, a great friend,” is how Hayman described her coach. “Coburn is Coburn,” said Sebring. “We just had a lot of fun. We did stuff together. We were her girls.”

“Those kids were my family,” acknowledged Coburn, who is married with no children and is no longer coaching. “I was able to put 100 percent of my heart and soul into these kids. I tried to teach them about self respect and we always tried to be a class act.”

On at least one occasion, a Tomahawk runner called out an opposing coach for a classless act during a cross country meet. Seems as though he was riding a bicycle next to the running course and making derogatory remarks to the M-P runners. “Shut up, you jerk,” Amber Simkins-Phillips shouted.

He did.

As busy as these women are today with their schooling, their careers and their families, a number of them still find time to get out and hit the roads. Connelly, whose goal is to be an orthopedic surgeon, spoke for several of her old teammates when she described running as a way to relieve stress. “I don't get to the starting line very often,” she said, meaning in road races, “but I always like to do well.”

Despite her busy schedule, Thompson — the future nurse — found time to train for the Portland Marathon last year and qualified for the prestigious Boston Marathon last April, but opted not to run it.

She aims to qualify again this year and to run Boston in 2011.

“I still call myself a runner,” she said.

And a proud member of a team of champions and achievers.