Ask Kristi Bartz’s coaches and teammates at Archbishop Murphy High School to describe her and they tend to use many of the same words.
Selfless. Positive. Inspiring. Driven. Loved.
“When we talk about the Murphy family — I’m big on the Murphy family because we’re a small community and we strive for great things — she was a great example of that,” said Mike Bartley, the Wildcats’ girls soccer coach. “She would do her best at everything she’d try to do. The thing I liked best about her is she would overcome anything. If there was a setback, she’d find a positive out of it. … Anytime she could do something for the team, boom! It was done. On a day-to-day basis, it was a pleasure just to see her.”
Bartz, a senior who died May 9 after being struck by a train in Silvana, was not only an all-conference soccer player and a state-caliber distance runner, but a well-rounded student, well liked by teachers and classmates and active in the community.
For all those qualities, Bartz has been selected The Herald’s 2015 Girls Athlete of the Year.
Bartz overwhelmingly won the online poll that selected five of the six finalists, and she was the unanimous choice of The Herald’s prep staff, who selected the winner.
Although Bartz’s life was tragically cut short, the bond she built with her school, her classmates and the community remains strong.
“With our school uniquely founded in faith, I think the kids believe that she’s in a better place and I think they believe that she’s still watching over us and motivating us from afar,” Archbishop Murphy track coach Paul Turner said. “I think it’s something that the kids feel inside of them. … We all still feel her. We are all still inspired by that. It’s hard to put into words, but I think it’s something we all feel together.”
There were few things Bartz couldn’t do.
Sophomore Teresa Barron, Bartz’s teammate on the Murphy track and field team, said success followed Bartz everywhere she went.
“She definitely had a natural ability to do anything,” Barron said. “She would try something new one day and she would just be better than everyone at it. At the same time, she didn’t take it for granted either. She always did everything that she could to improve herself.”
Bartz was a team captain on both the girls soccer and track teams. She was a first-team All-Cascade Conference selection in both sports. She twice finished second in the 800-meter run at the Class 2A state meet and owns the school record in that event with a time of 2 minutes, 16.25 seconds. She also holds school records in the 1,600 (5:18.82) and the high jump (5-foot-2).
Bartz had the second-fastest 2A time in the 800 this season at 2:18.87, a mark that was the top time in the state for the classification most of the year. That time made her one of the favorites to win the state championship. Turner said she would have run a significantly faster time at the state meet.
“She was just an amazing athlete. It’s kind of unfair how good she was,” senior Lindsey Dorney, another member of the Murphy track team, said with a smile. “I started doing the mile my freshman year and she started doing it her junior year and I’m still not as good as her.”
Off the field, Bartz kept busy by participating in Knowledge Bowl, DECA and National Honor Society. She boasted a 3.97 grade-point average and had committed to run track at the University of British Columbia.
“She was a great kid. She was a great student,” Wildcats athletic director Erick Streelman said. “… She was the all-around epitome of what we want our athletes to be: great student, great character, great player, great kid. She was pretty special.”
Said Dorney: “She really was a role model for a lot of people. She was a role model for me.”
Bartz began playing soccer when she was 5 years old. She took up track in middle school, where she also ran cross country and played basketball.
Bartz had “a huge passion for sports,” said her mother, Karen Bartz. So much so that the seasons — notably high school track and select soccer — occasionally overlapped.
No matter the sport, Bartz always looked to improve.
“Even in track, it was, ‘I want to get a better time. I want to break that record,’” Karen Bartz said. “When she broke that mile record, it was more important to her to break that record and get the time she wanted than to win the race and not do that.”
Brooke Richardson, Kristi Bartz’s close friend and a teammate on the soccer team, recalled one of her first interactions with Bartz, when the pair were on the junior-varsity soccer team their freshman year.
“My freshman year, we weren’t close friends at the time, I was a defender and they moved me up to forward to score,” Richardson said. “(Bartz) grabbed my face and sang a song she made up at the moment to encourage me to score.”
Did Richardson score?
“I eventually did and we kind of freaked out a little bit,” she said.
Richardson said one of the few areas where Bartz didn’t excel was in following directions when driving to a new place.
“She was really bad at directions,” Richardson said with a laugh. “She had to drive herself to Burlington for a soccer tournament and ended up driving to Shoreline and had to turn around. Another time she was trying to get to Bellingham and went south again. She did that a lot.”
Bartz planned to compete in a heptathlon after graduation. She had been accepted into the University of British Columbia business school, which admits just 600 of the more than 6,000 applicants it gets annually. She was looking forward to studying abroad and getting “a little bit away from home,” her mother said.
“Part of her wanted to be a journalist, but that alone was kind of hard,” Karen Bartz said. “I think she felt if she got a business background, it would help. I don’t think she knew where that would lead her, but she loved to work with people. I think she was going in trying to figure out: Where was she going to put all of that together?”
Though Bartz’s school records may fall one day, her memory will live on. Bartley and the girls soccer team retired her No. 4 jersey. It, along with her track jersey, will be displayed at the high school. And Archbishop Murphy’s Female Track Athlete of the Year Award has been renamed the Kristi Bartz Award.
“She had a lot of God-given talent,” Turner said. “What gets lost with her sometimes is how fierce of a competitor she was. She hated to lose. That drove her so much.
“That fierce competitiveness is what makes talented athletes exceptional. She had a drive to be the best. She expected that of herself.”
Barron shared a quote by Mark Twain that was one of Bartz’s favorites:
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Kristi Bartz did all of that.
Usually at a record-setting pace.
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