UW runners to face former teammate at NCAA meet

Published 9:57 am Monday, November 22, 2010

It’s simple math, but Greg Metcalf isn’t going to let himself do it.

No matter what happens at Monday’s NCAA women’s cross country meet in Terre Haute, Ind., the University of Washington coach isn’t going to let himself play the game of what-if. He’s not going to look at where North Carolina junior Kendra Schaaf finishes, plug it in with his top six runners, and ponder what could have been.

When the Huskies run Monday at their fourth consecutive NCAA championships, they’ll be doing it against a field that includes one of their former teammates. Schaaf was a key member of the Huskies’ national championship team as a freshman two years ago, and she abruptly transferred after her sophomore year.

Now, for the first time, she’ll run against the Huskies.

“It’s going to be really weird,” said UW senior Mel Lawrence, who will be competing in her fourth NCAA championship race and for the seventh time on the course. “But stuff like that happens all the time. Hopefully, we can say hello — we’re still cordial with her — and then move on. But it will be really bizarre to see her in blue.”

Schaaf shrugged off the significance of today’s meeting, saying that there probably won’t be much interaction because cross country is an individual sport filled with athletes focused on the race. She still stays in contact with some of her former teammates and holds no ill will toward the program.

“There are no hard feelings,” she said in a phone conversation last week. “It will be nice to see them.”

If Schaaf was back at UW, she would be the leader of a team that may well be today’s favorite. She finished 12th in the nation as a freshman, second last year and is among a handful of runners who have a legitimate chance to finish first today.

Without Schaaf, the Huskies are the fourth-ranked team and will enter Monday’s meet with two true freshmen to go along with experienced leaders Lawrence and Christine Babcock.

But Metcalf isn’t allowing himself to wonder about what could have been.

“There have been times earlier this season when I’ve thought: ‘Gosh, if Kendra Schaaf was here, what would that have meant to the team?’” he said. “But I don’t even think about that anymore. All the women we have are excited about being at Washington and for running for Washington at nationals. The seven women we have running (today) are definitely the seven we want.”

Metcalf said he was “shocked” when Schaaf told him of her plans to transfer after the 2009-10 school year. Both sides admit that they’ve had differing opinions on training techniques, but he didn’t think it would be enough for her to leave.

“She had some ups and downs, like a nagging foot thing that I know frustrated Kendra,” he said. “But I never got the sense that she wasn’t happy. And I still think she enjoyed her time here. … Sometimes, a change is something that’s needed.”

Schaaf said her transfer was mostly about her environment. She said she never felt comfortable in Seattle because she grew up in a small town (Craven, Saskatchewan) and didn’t much like the big city.

When pressed about her athletic reasons for transferring, Schaaf said: “It wasn’t really a big negative against the training, but lots of coaches have different training philosophies. I had a lot of injuries there.”

Schaaf said she did have some fond memories of her time at UW, but when asked about the 2008 NCAA title of which she was a part, she said that wasn’t that big a deal to her.

“Coming from Canada, where we don’t have high school teams, I never had that team mentality,” she said. “I guess I took for granted that we won the team title. I was a little more bummed out about my race. I didn’t think I finished as high as I should have.”

UNC coach Peter Watson is Canadian, which was part of the allure of that program. Schaaf also felt right at home in Chapel Hill, N.C., she said.

She became immediately eligible because transfer rules are different for cross country than they are for some other sports. All she needed was a release signed by UW’s Metcalf. He never thought twice about his decision to release her.

“I’m not about trying to hold back a woman who doesn’t want to be here,” he said.

Now Metcalf will have to watch Schaaf run in a different uniform. And it will be difficult not to add up the points she could have earned for his Huskies.

But he’s not going there.

“Kendra’s not (at UW) anymore,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, she runs for North Carolina now, and she’s going to score points for another team.”

The Huskies have finished in the top 10 three years in a row. This year’s team, minus Schaaf, might be the least likely participant but is peaking at the right time. Babcock burned a possible redshirt year by returning from a foot injury earlier this month, helping lead UW to a third-place finish at the Pac-10 championships and first place at the West Regional. Lawrence and freshmen Katie Flood and Justine Johnson have also helped keep the Huskies in contention for another national title.

“It’s an incredible group of young women,” Metcalf said. “Not for one minute did I think we’d not be back at the national championship.”

Not even with the Huskies’ best runner in a different part of the country.