The RoundHouse | 6/5/2024 10:08:00 AM
By Paul Suellentrop
Up to the halfway point,
Lucy Ndungu labored along through a mob of runners and doubted herself.
"Am I able to finish it off?" she said she remembers thinking.
The 5-kilometer mark of the 10,000-meter run at the NCAA West Preliminaries is not the ideal place for hesitancy. Ndungu, a Wichita State junior from St. Louis, quickly returned to her strategy and positive thoughts.
"I realized 'This is the race and I have to stick with people. Whenever they make a move, I move with them,'" she said. "I just hang on to people."
That competitive spirit carried Ndungu into the NCAA Championships in Eugene, Ore. She runs Thursday evening at Hayward Field after qualifying with a time of 34 minutes, 23.39 seconds in the preliminary meet in Fayetteville, Ark. She placed 11
th after entering the field ranked No. 25. The top 12 finishers advance.
"She just hangs in there," distance coach
Kirk Hunter said. "I am incredibly impressed by her spirit. To beat girls that had run a minute faster than her during the year, to hang in there. In those last few laps, she was working hard but she kept picking it up and picking it up."
Ndungu remembers getting lots of help in Fayetteville. She heard Hunter and teammates yelling encouragement. She heard
Larry Staton, the team's unofficial photographer with social media account @ShockerTrackBkr, telling her to keep pushing.
"That really helped me pull through," she said. "I could hear Farrah (Miller), my coaches. Although there was a big crowd, I could hear them screaming specifically for me."
She also found strength internally.
"I move with faith," she said. "Throughout the race, I'm trying to speak to God, trying to overcome whatever I'm going through with faith."
Ndungu, who NJCAA titles in the 5,000 and 10,000 for Cloud County Community College last spring, will enter Thursday's race again as one of the underdogs. Hunter said the work she did last summer, training in Alamosa, Colo., prepared her for the adjustment to NCAA Division I running. She finished as the runner-up in the American Athletic Conference Championship cross country meet last fall.
Equally important, she asked Hunter questions about her training and voiced her opinions about what works.
"She shows how important running is to her," Hunter said. "She is not scared to state her opinion about running. She's not scared to come in and say 'Coach, I need this to get better.' She seeks me out. The best athletes do that."
Each fall, Hunter said, he tells his runners that he wants to push them to be better runners and he expects them to push him to be a better coach. While some routines and tactics might work for some runners, Hunter also wants to know how to coax the best out of others, mentally and physically.
"Telling me that was a huge help in me helping her," Hunter said. "Now I know what she needs to motivate her to be successful. Each person will grasp onto different things. That helped me be a better coach. Communication is key for us."
Ndungu will enter Thursday's race seeded No. 23 in the 24-person field. The top eight finishers in each event earns first team All-American, with the ninth through 16
th place finishers earning second team recognition and all others earning honorable mention status.
Junior
Destiny Masters, from El Dorado, will compete in the heptathlon on Friday and Saturday and the high jump on Saturday. Junior
Brady Palen, from Beloit, competes in the high jump on Friday.
Paul Suellentrop writes about Wichita State athletics for university Strategic Communications. Story suggestion? Contact him at paul.suellentrop@wichita.edu.
