Onto the next lap: Miss Track and Field Goethals ready for new challenge

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BY Dan Stickradt
Jun 23 2010

 

BY DAN STICKRADT

SENIOR EDITOR

dan.stickradt@northoaklandsports.com

 

ROCHESTER HILLS — Megan Goethals doesn’t remember her first official track and field race. All she remembers was that the shorter the distance, the better.

“When I first started, I was sprinter,” laughed Goethals, now a recent graduate of Rochester High School. “I used to run the 60 dash and the 100 dash. I didn’t like the distance races. I thought they were too long.”

Goethals competed for West Middle School in Rochester Hills in seventh and eighth grade. It was there that she began to experiment with longer races.

“I started to run the (1,600 meters) some and I realized that I liked it,” recalled Goethals. “I guess I started to realize that (distance races) were what I should be doing.”

Goethals began training in the sixth grade, when she practiced with some friends from Holy Family Regional School in Rochester, a catholic K-8 school on the campus of St. Andrews Catholic Church, where she was a member at the time.

“I had a bunch of friends there, so I started to run with them,” explained Goethals. “I ran for West the next couple of years.”

This is where the seeds were first planted for Goethals, a slow-rising star. By the time she was in eighth grade at West, she was one of the best in the Rochester area and even placed at both the Rochester City and middle school Oakland County meet.

MILES AWAY

Still, Goethals didn’t understand distance running: The grueling workouts, the difference between cross-country and track and field races, the miles of hard work, the mental preparation and the strategy of running a cross-country race or in the pack in the 1,600 or 3,200 runs. Like most student-athletes at the middle school levels, Goethals had a long distance to go before she emerged as a prep star, or even had a concept of what it takes to succeed at the high school level.

Often times, track and field at the middle school level is a social gathering, not a high-level circle of elite racing. It wasn’t even Goethals’ favorite sport at the time.

“I used to love basketball,” admitted Goethals, talking about the lure of ball sports for younger athletes. “I played in middle school and still played my freshman year.”

In fact, despite some encouragement for cross country, Goethals still went out for and made the freshman basketball team at Rochester High in the fall of 2006 — the final year that basketball was still contested as a fall sport in Michigan. Midway through that season, Rochester cross-country and track coach Larry Adams allowed Goethals to run in the junior-varsity race at the Oakland County Cross-Country Championships held in early October that year.

“Coach Adams let me run a few JV races, as they didn’t really conflict with basketball games,” said Goethals. “I wanted to see how I could do.”

Goethals wound up winning the junior varsity race by nearly two minutes — and her effort would have placed her in the top-30 in the varsity race. A buzz was stirring in local cross-country circles about a young girl from Rochester …

Goethals did not run a varsity race again until the regional meet, where the Falcons won their first regional crown since the mid-1990s. Running in severe weather at Highland Hills Golf Course near Holly, Goethals was third-best for Rochester in that race and sixth overall, helping the Falcons to 50 points and the team title.

The following weekend, Rochester claimed fifth at the Lower Peninsula Division 1 state finals — the team’s highest state-meet finish since 1980, when the Falcons were third.

Rochester trailed state champion Rochester Adams (112 to 225 points) at the 2006 state finals and Goethals, despite running a career-best 19:00.1 at the state meet, was only 40th overall, just 15 seconds shy of all-state accolades. This would be one a rare occasion that Goethals, at the very least, did not earn all-state.

“We started to realize that we could have a really good team,” said Goethals of Rochester’s cross-country team.

The running community also started to realize that Goethals was a talent in the making.

BUDDING STAR

By the time track season her freshman year rolled around, Goethals was dedicated to distance running and all other sports were on the wayside.

The Falcons were 24^th at the D-1 track and field state meet in the spring of 2007, although Goethals did not score any points. She was ninth in the 1,600 (5:08.51), just one slot shy of reaching the medals stand, and 18^th in the 800 (2:21.60). She did see a teammate, Tiffany Abrahamian, win the state title in the 3,200, the Falcons’ first-ever female state champion in track and field, and that added to Goethals’ hunger of becoming a standout runner herself.

Later that year, Goethals and the Falcons were on fire, blazing the trails to a No. 1 ranking in cross-country for the entire regular season. She wound up 23rd individually (18:32.4) at the D-1 state meet (19^th in the team race) after numerous top-10 finishes throughout the year — and more importantly — helped lead Rochester to 108 points and the Division 1 state championship, the Falcons’ first since 1978.

“That was a great day,” said Goethals, who was one of five Falcons inside the top-60 at the state finals that year, which helped them capture the title by 46 points over Grand Haven.

The steady climb continued for Goethals in the spring of 2008, when she grabbed her first all-state medals in track and field. She was fourth in the 1,600 (5:00.04) and sixth in the 3,200 (11:01.71). She also ran a leg on an 11^th-place the 3,200 relay (9:39.42), which broke the school record that year.

Rochester was also 15^th overall (15 points) at the D -1 state finals, the school’s highest state finish in track and field since the 1980s. The Falcons had multiple top-20 state finishes in the 1970s and 1980s.

THROUGHBREAD STANDING

Following her sophomore year of track, Goethals lost her running mates Abrahamian and Kim Secord to graduation. She opted to significantly change her training regimen, increasing miles and mixing in more intense workouts. She went from being just one of the pack of all-state runners in a deep talent pool in Michigan …  to the state’s best.

She ran the tables in cross country against state competition in the fall of 2008, winning league, county and regional titles and her first state championship. Although the Falcons dipped to 13^th in the team standings during her junior year, Goethals clocked 17:10.1 in winning the state title by seven seconds over Waterford Mott’s Shannon Osika.

She backed that up by winning the Footlocker Midwest Meet three weeks later and wound up placing third at the Footlocker National Championships, best-ever finish by a Michigan female prep runner at the time.

By this time, Goethals was not only running for her team, but running for individual standing among the nation’s elite.

“I think it was my junior year of cross country that was special for me because I realized that I could compete with the best girls in the country, and there are some great runners out there,” offered Goethals, who said it was hard to take any one moment of her prep career over another.

And Goethals was definitely among them.

Again, the honors continued to come in during the spring of 2009 at the D-1 state track and field meet. She not only led the Falcons to 34 points and a fourth place finish, which at the time was the school’s highest finish in school history, boys or girls track combined, but she qualified in four events for the state meet, winning four at the regional and placing in three at the state finals.

She anchored Rochester’s 3,200 relay to another school-record at the state finals, passing several competing relays in the final two laps to land the Falcons eighth (9:32.26). Goethals came back to win both the 1,600 (4:51.2) and 3,200 (10:37.5).

Goethals was well on her way to stardom — and the greatest chapter was not written just yet.

Goethals placed second in a pair of races at the Nike Nationals in June 2009, a national championship meet that annually attracts some of the best high-school-aged track and field athletes from coast to coast. As it turns out, those were her last two prep races in which she did not win.

Her senior cross-country season performances earned her Michigan Miss Cross Country and Gatorade National Cross-Country Runner of the Year honors. Undefeated throughout the campaign, Goethals set multiple course and state records along the way, and became the first female runner in state history to break 17 minutes, crossing the line at Michigan Speedway near Brooklyn in front of a standing ovation — and in a swift 16:54.8.

She later won both the Midwest Footlocker and National Footlocker races, the later at the finish line after a furious kick in the last quarter mile.

Goethals later added to her resume, winning the national 3,200 meters indoors title (10:07.5) in New York back in March. An injury sidelined her for a solid month this track season and she came back in May stronger than ever.

“That was the only time that I had been out for a long period,” said Goethals.

The extra rest helped Goethals lead the Falcons to one final push for glory.

After winning three events at the regional in leading her team to its second straight regional crown, Goethals stepped onto the track fresh at the Oakland County Championships track meet for the 3,200, scratching out of the 3,200 relay and 1,600. She ran a blistering 10:00.15, one of the fastest times in U.S. history for a  female runner.

Eight days later, Goethals set state-meet records in winning both the 1,600 (4:47.37) and 3,200 (10:22.75) at the D-1 finals at Rockford High School. She also ran the leadoff leg and joined Cady Pozolo, Erin Leppek and Brook Handler on the state champion 3,200 relay unit that clocked 9:05.47, which broke the all-division state meet record by two one-hundreths of a second (Clarkston ran 9:05.49 in 2005).

The Falcons wore T-shirts labeled “Crazy Eights” the week of and during the state meet. With eight state qualifiers in all, each of the eight  individuals won state titles in individual events or part of relays, and Goethals was part of this elite pack.

The end result was Rochester winning the Division 1 state championship with 65 points, seven more than state power Rockford’s 58, to become the first Class A/Division 1 from Oakland County to win a state title in girls track and field.

“In terms of the team, it was the greatest way to go out,” smiled Goethals, who departs Rochester winning team state championships in both sports. “Our goal the whole season was to win the state championship. We already had one in cross country a couple of years ago. Winning in track is a lot harder.”

Goethals was a huge part of the title run and helping the Falcons establish themselves as a state powerhouse in both cross-country and track and field over the past four years.

“You don’t replace a girl like Megan,” said Adams at the recent Division 1 state meet. “She’s meant a lot to our program.”

As an encore, Goethals came back to win the 1,600 and 800 meters at the Midwest Meet of Champions, clocking 4:43.05 in the 1,600, which is the second-fastest time ever by a Michigan runner in the event. She also ran 2:10.58, the best effort in Oakland County this season and top-20 all-time in Michigan.

In her final high school race, competed on the track at North Carolina A&T on June 18, Goethals won the two-mile (18 meters longer than 3,200 meters) at the New Balance Nationals. Her time of 10:01.16 was only .08 off the national record and the second fastest in U.S. history.

“I’m sad that high school running is all over. I’ve had a lot of great memories,” she said. “But I am ready for a new challenge.”“

TURNING THE PAGE

Despite all of the individual and team accolades that Goethals has received during her career — which features dozens of school, course, track, league, county and state records, not to mention her top-10 nationally-ranked efforts — she is finally ready for the next step. The greatest distance runner in Michigan history and one of the best prep distance aces in U.S. history has competed in her final high school race, closing the book on four stellar years.

Come late August, Goethals will head west to Seattle, Washington, where she will enroll in the University of Washington. The next chapter of her running career is set to begin.

“I won’t run any more races this summer,” she said, almost welcoming a break and a step outside of the limelight. “I know they will be sending us workouts soon. I can’t wait to get going on them. It’s exciting to be doing something different (with workouts). I look forward to running out there and making new friends.”

Goethals is one of Washington’s four top-20 recruits to ink letters-of-intent for cross-country with the Huskies — all which will be a part of a loaded cross-country and track and field squads which will be ranked in the top 10 in the nation for NCAA Division I.

“Washington won the national championship a couple of years ago (in cross country) and they were third last year,” beamed Goethals. “Our goal is to get them back to being No. 1.”

That’s the position that Megan Goethals is most comfortable with these days. It’s taken a few laps to get to this point. She has learned that the sport of running is definitely not a sprint, but a marathon.

And there are several more laps to go.

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Last updated: Sep 01 2010 at 2:23 AM

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