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MONTGOMERY: Shegoski helped JHU make history

MHS grad is always on the run

By Justin Feil, Assistant Sports Editor
   Lara Shegoski is in pretty good shape.
   She should be.
   The Montgomery High School graduate spends her days on the run as a junior at Johns Hopkins University. On Monday, she was up at 4:30 a.m., went to ROTC until 7 a.m., jumped in the pool for some morning cross training, attended a full schedule of classes, then ran at track and field practice, then went to work as facility manager at the Hopkins gym for three hours before studying until 11 p.m.
   ”That’s pretty normal,” Shegoski said. “Two nights a week, you end up staying up past midnight doing work. Three days a week, I’m up at 4:30, or 5:00.”
   The schedule is unrelenting, but so is Shegoski and the payoffs are huge. She captained the Blue Jays women’s cross country team to its first Division III national championship last month. It was the first national title by a women’s team at Hopkins. The Blue Jays were 14th last year at nationals.
   ”It was a big deal,” Shegoski said. “When we got back to school, the football team, lacrosse and our entire (track and field) team was there cheering. Especially at a school like Hopkins where sports aren’t big, it was a big deal.”
   Johns Hopkins is 13th in the “U.S. News and World Report” rankings for 2013. The acceptance rate is just over 18 percent of all applicants. Studies are serious, and Shegoski is as serious about hers as she is about her running.
   Shegoski could graduate in the spring after just three years at Hopkins, this despite being a double major in economics and computer science while balancing commitments to ROTC and running. What was originally a mistake became the norm for her, as she took 20 credits in each of her first three semesters. She hasn’t had a semester with less than 17 credits.
   ”I have to study my butt off and do the work,” Shegoski said. She wasn’t supposed to be at Hopkins originally, but matriculated there when she injured her shoulder during pre-freshman training for the Air Force Academy. With ROTC training at Hopkins, Shegoski will go on active duty as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army after graduation in two years.
   ”I jumped into Hopkins for a year,” said Shegoski, who had planned to return to the Academy when her shoulder healed. “I had no idea what I was stepping into.”
   The Blue Jays haven’t lost a Centennial Conference Championship since 2007, and they also have won the last five NCAA Mideast Championships. They were seventh in the NCAA Championships in 2009 and 2010, Shegoski’s freshman year. So good were the Blue Jays at regionals this year that Shegoski, their sixth finisher that day, would have been No. 1 on five of the 10 teams.
   ”If we don’t win, we get upset,” Shegoski said. “We wanted to keep the tradition going this year. We haven’t lost a conference championship or regional since I’ve been at Hopkins — in indoor, outdoor and cross country.”
   The national title, though, was something new and something extra special. Shegoski was the sixth finisher that day for the Blue Jays, though she may as well have been their fifth and final scoring runner.
   ”It’s glorified team running,” Shegoski said. “We crossed at the exact same time.”
   It all came together that day for Hopkins in a decisive win. Runner-up Wartburg was 63 points back, the biggest margin of victory for the DIII title race in 10 years.
   ”I think we really didn’t know how strong we were until after pre-nationals and we ran the course and said, this is real,” Shegoski said. “We knew it was possible. We had to keep doing everything we’d been doing all year — yoga, pool running, lifting.
   ”We’ve always lifted and pool ran. Yoga is a new thing. It helped this year that my teammates are some of my best friends at school. It’s awesome to win something with them.”
   There was a new sense of confidence for the Blue Jays as the toed the starting line at nationals in Terre Haute, Ind.
   ”We knew we had a chance,” Shegoski said. “Our whole thing was to go out and have fun. On the line, we were screaming. We just wanted to do what we did all year. Our coach had said to run the first half smart and second half with heart, and you’ll do what you’ve done the whole year.”
   Despite an infection this year that would have seemed to slow her, Shegoski was pleased with the results that she posted in her third year after a sophomore slump.
   ”I think I had pretty good season,” she said. “I had a pretty bad season last year. This year was a lot better. I was running times faster than my freshman year. I was excited to be out there actually competing again.”
   Shegoski and Hopkins will be competing closer to her home this weekend. They will run in Princeton University’s New Year’s Invitational on Sunday. Track is their focus for the next six months, but they’ve already talked about defending their national cross country crown in her senior year.
   ”The only person we lose is our No.3 runner,” Shegoski said. “With our new recruits, we’re looking to come back stronger and see what we can do next year.”
   There is still plenty to do before then, particularly for Shegoski. When school ends for the year next spring, she will travel to Fort Lewis in Seattle, Wash., for leadership development training through ROTC.
   She will get on a plane when the training is completed and fly to Israel where she will represent the United States in the 2013 Maccabiah Games in the half marathon and 10-kilometers after qualifying two months ago. She also qualified in the 5k.
   It might be just enough to keep Lara Shegoski on the run.