Vixens run as club team

By Laura Clark

Published: September 24, 2008

Seven women set off down a gravel road, winding up through the tree line under a cloudy sky just after dawn the morning of Sept. 11.

‘When I came here it was beautiful, and I thought why didn’t they have cross country? It makes sense. It’s the perfect location for it.’ — Suzanne Ramsey, club team adviser

The Sweet Briar cross country club carried plastic bags to pick up trash along the road, partially fulfilling their community service requirements. For the second year, the women are training and competing in college meets as a club with the hope that one day they will be a varsity Vixen sport.

They squeeze their practices into the wee hours before class. On Tuesdays, they meet at 6:15 a.m. for speed work at Amherst County High School’s track. It takes dedication and sacrificing Friday night fun, but the women say it’s worth it. Many of the women have never run competitively before.

Junior Lauren Miller said it’s better than jumping into a cold swimming pool.

“I swam my entire life, and I was burnt out with swimming,” she said. “I never liked running. I always hated it.”

But the first-year member wanted to get in shape, and the club setting provided the push she needed to be consistent.

“At the beginning of the season I couldn’t even run two miles without being worn out and feeling like I couldn’t breathe,” Miller said. “Even though (the meets) are tough, it’s really fun being with the entire team.”

The club grew out of Suzanne Ramsey’s running class. Ramsey, a writer for the College Relations office, started the club with then-sophomore Laura McKenna. McKenna ran as a freshman in high school in Bristol but devoted her time to horses until graduation. At Sweet Briar, she and a friend thought about training for a triathlon until McKenna remembered she hated swimming. But she kept running.

“We have all this space and trails,” she said. “We didn’t have a club, so it kind of went from there.”

McKenna is the club’s president, and Ramsey is the adviser. Ramsey gets out and runs with the girls, acting as a coach by planning workouts and helping organize trips to meets and securing funds for the club’s operations. With a wide range of abilities, Ramsey said she focuses on keeping the practices fun. When some of the new runners worried about being last, Ramsey told them, “If losing a race is the worst thing that happens in your life, you’re doing OK.”

The first meet of this season was at Washington and Lee, and it was raining.

“But we had so much fun, and it was such a big accomplishment for so many of the girls who had never run a race before,” McKenna said. “We’re going to a lot of races, and we’re getting acknowledged. Other coaches are coming up to us and telling us we’re doing a good job.”

The club runs 5- and 6-kilometer races against other Old Dominion Athletic Conference teams.

They wear shocking pink jerseys, and this year bought their own black warm-ups.

“The goal is not just to run like a real team, you know, come to practices, but also to look like a real team,” Ramsey said.

The club knows Sweet Briar’s athletic department has limited funds, but that doesn’t stop their push for varsity status.

“The goal is to get so established we look like a varsity team, that they say, ‘We want to fund this,’ ” Ramsey said. “The goal is to be so good we have to be noticed, and that this could fill a need here. These girls wouldn’t be doing a sport if they weren’t running cross country.”

Earning varsity status isn’t just a matter of respect for the club. The women said it would help them in an array of ways beyond easing travel and meet costs. McKenna, for one, said that as a varsity sport, the runners could return to school for preseason training and train more than just an hour in the morning together. Miller said she would also like to see it become a sport for Ramsey, who puts so much effort into the club, running with them and finding the meets.

“Even if it doesn’t become a sport, it’s still a lot of fun, and everybody takes it pretty seriously so it doesn’t feel like a club,” Miller said.

The club has grown from five members last year to eight this season. Ramsey said as long as people are interested, she’ll help the club. One reason she’d like to see the club become a varsity sport is so the season wouldn’t end in just six weeks and the runners could go on to compete in the Division III post-season meets. For now though, Ramsey keeps guiding the women’s training with a light attitude, encouraging them to run some races on their own throughout the year. Like her, these runners may be on their way to running for life—or as long as their bodies hold up.

“After college, you may not have a lacrosse team or a soccer team to play with, but you can always run,” Ramsey said. “It’s a sport you can take with you.”

Cross country club members Anna Edwards, from left, Michelle Anderson, Alle Taylor and Stephanie Kepner meet in front of Sweet Briar’s gym to stretch before practice.



Anderson and Kepner carry bags for trash pickup.