If you were looking for someone to make track and field history at Gonzaga University this season, you might have looked at someone other than Shelby Mills.
In her first two years of college, and even back in her days at Snohomish High School, she was something less than exceptional.
“I went from being an OK high school runner to being a pretty awful college runner,” Mills said. “I was like last on our team. It was definitely not impressive.”
But that was Mills then and this is Mills now. On Thursday, at historic Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, she will become the first Gonzaga athlete in history to run at outdoor nationals when she competes in the steeplechase at the NCAA Division I Championships.
Not bad for a runner who, just a few years ago, “was just trying to stay on the team,” she said.
Mills has blossomed in the past year, and her improvement testifies to the value of persistence and the importance of hard work. Through vigorous training, and by embracing a unique event in the steeplechase, she has become one of the nation’s elite.
With a training regimen that can reach 70 miles a week, her development is a result of “the miles kind of adding up,” she said.
“But honestly,” she went on, “so much of the credit goes to my high school coach, David LeWarne. He was the one who always said, ‘I know you have more in you.’ Or as he always said it, ‘I know there’s more in the tank.’ … I think I knew there was more in there, but it’s been fun to see it actually come out.”
Mills played fall soccer in her first three years at Snohomish, and turned out for cross country only as a senior. She ran track all four years and had some success, but never quite enough to reach the state meet.
Her sophomore season at Snohomish included one of the most painful memories of her running career — and literally so. Competing in the 3,200 meters at the district meet, she was sprinting the final stretch when she collapsed on the track, having broken the tibia in her lower left leg.
“It hurt a lot, but it didn’t really occur to me that it was broken,” she said. “In fact, I tried to get up a couple of times. … It’s kind of hazy for me. I always thought I was only down for a couple of minutes, but apparently I was down there yelling and screaming for a while.
“(The doctors) never really could diagnose it. They assumed I was running on a stress fracture from overuse, just running on it too much … and it snapped.”
She spent that summer in a full-leg cast, though the whimsy of youth led her to go swimming a few times.
“In a pool and also at a lake,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t think my doctor appreciated that.”
Mills was back running with the Snohomish track team a year later, and after her 2012 graduation, she chose to attend Gonzaga “because it not only had the community I was looking for, but because I could run there, too.”
Still, her college running did not start out well. At a time when her body was changing, and no doubt also because of the lingering effects from her injury, she struggled to compete.
“When she came in here, I don’t think she really felt comfortable as a runner,” said Patty Ley, Gonzaga’s head women’s track coach. “She just didn’t have that spark. Her stride was off and her rhythm was off. She said she just wasn’t feeling right.”
But over time, Ley said, “she was able to weather a really rough storm. She worked hard to re-learn who she was and how to make her body work.” And at that point, Ley said, “things started to happen.”
As a redshirt freshman a year ago, Mills took up the steeplechase, a 3,000-meter race that involves jumping five barriers on each lap, with a water pit at one barrier. This season she shattered the school record in the event by nearly a half-minute, and she has since broken that record. The new mark is 10 minutes, 11.37 seconds, which she ran at the University of Texas on May 29 to qualify for nationals.
She will run Thursday in one of two qualifying heats of 12 women, with the top five in each heat and the next two fastest times advancing to Saturday’s final.
Because running is “pretty much my life,” going to nationals “is very exciting,” said Mills, a biology major who has gone from walk-on to scholarship athlete. “I’m just going to try to go out there and do what I’ve done, which is compete once I get up to the line to start racing. And then just see how it goes.
“There are some girls that are way faster, but I know there’ll be a lot of girls that are right in the range I’m capable of running. So it’ll definitely be a fight for those last few spots (into the final).”
Ley said Mills has a good chance to race again Saturday, though the first goal is to finish under 10 minutes.
“We’ve really known all year that she’s on the cusp of being able to go under 10,” Ley said. “I think she’s fully capable, and if she does go sub-10, that puts her in a place of maybe going to the final.
“If she goes under 10 and doesn’t make it to the final, then she did everything she could. But if she gets in the race and competes for a spot, good things are going to happen. And I wouldn’t be surprised at anything.”
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