By Tim Morris
After seizing the Monmouth County 1,600-meter championship with her withering kick back in May, Freehold Township High School’s Ciara Roche declared that she wanted to be remembered. She wanted to leave a legacy.
“I want to make my mark. I don’t want to be forgotten,” she said after leaving the competition in the dust with her closing speed.
Rest assured, the Patriots’ champion need not worry about that. She left an enduring legacy as one of the greatest distance runners the Freehold Regional High School District (FRHSD) has produced and is the News Transcript’s 2016 Senior Athlete of the Year.
Patriots track coach Todd Briggs certainly believes she won’t be forgotten.
“Ciara has meant a great deal to the program,” he said. “She has continued a mid-distance/distance legacy at [Freehold Township] that dates back to Janel Parker and has seen the likes of Allyson Moskal, Kelly Pereira, Brianne Roche and her teammates over the past four years. She has not only continued that tradition, but enhanced it like no other before her. She raised the bar higher and left her mark on a program that will now be synonymous with her name. “
Running was about more than championships and records to Roche.
“I made my best friends through running,” she said. “I learned a lot through the sport through success and failure and how to deal with stress.”
She added that if she could handle the stress of losing the NJSIAA Meet of Champions (MOC) title by half a second (to Haddonfield High School’s Briana Gess, 4:50.09-4:50.57), she can deal with most anything.
Roche handled both success and failure the same. It kept her on an even keel and kept her working.
Despite her incredible achievements, it wasn’t always easy.
“The fall of my junior year, I had a string of injuries. That was my lowest point,” she said. “I always kept my head high.”
It’s how Roche handles adversity, Briggs noted, that made her a great champion.
“Besides her natural talent, the thing that has contributed most to her success has been her mental fortitude,” he said. “There were times where by her standards she failed to meet up to expectations and times when she was injured or ill. She has been knocked down at times, but she has also recovered and come back stronger. It’s her will to win, to shine, that makes her stand out. Never allowed excuses — always wanted more out of herself. An absolute champion by any definition of the word.”
Overcoming those junior year injuries allowed Roche to come back to the point that this year, she was the runner everyone was marking. She had the pressure of being the favorite — the one to beat.
“I never took [being the favorite] for granted,” she said. “I used it as motivation to run fast.
“That’s how I do it.”
A strong finish to her junior year gave Roche momentum for what would be a great senior year, the kind of year she wanted to have of running fast and winning championships.
Although the individual MOC title eluded her, the 2015-16 season was everything Roche wanted it to be, starting with her sixth-place finish at the cross-country MOC and a Holmdel Park personal best of 18:30. She also took her Ocean County Park personal best to 17:40.
When she won the 800-1,600 double at the outdoor Central Jersey Group IV championships, it lifted her career sectional championship total to 10. She added Group IV state championships during the indoor (1,600) and outdoor (800 and 1,600) seasons.
Along the way, she set meet and district records. She set district marks in the 800 (2:09.88) and the mile (4:49.95) outdoors and the 1,600 (4:1.18) and mile (4:54.17) indoors.
She ran fast enough to run the 1-Mile at the Millrose Games (sixth) and the Penn Relays (seventh). Her final high school race was at the New Balance Outdoor Nationals, where she ran in the Emerging Elite race and won, setting the district record at 4:49.95 in the process.
The 21st century has seen girls distance running in the FRHSD really take off, and there is a connection between a trio of standouts.
Roche can recount everything that Colts Neck High School’s Ashley Higginson, now one of the country’s best steeplechasers, did in high school. She wanted to follow in her footsteps. Higginson was Roche’s inspiration.
Howell High School’s Lindsey Gallo got it started. She won the 1,600 at the MOC as a sophomore and went on to add Group IV state championships in cross-country and indoor and outdoor track. Gallo, a 2000 Howell graduate, served as Higginson’s motivator.
Thanks to this trio, the girls who follow know that anything is possible if they aim high Roche wants to be for future girls what Gallo and Higginson have been.
“I hope they go after my records, that I’m an inspiration for them” she said.
Besides her individual honors, Roche was a part of one of the great relay teams in state history: Freehold Township’s 4×800. Roche and teammates Adrian Vitello, Emily Bracher and Caitlyn Poss won the New Balance Indoor Nationals championship and the MOC title and were New Balance Outdoor Nationals All-Americans. She was also part of a Distance Medley Relay team that was All-American.
The team championships were among the highlights of her career, Roche noted, but what stood out the most was her individual races because those were all on her own.
As she looks ahead to Cornell University, Roche is ready for a new challenge. She won’t be the team’s No. 1 runner; she’ll be away from home and out of her comfort zone with a lot more responsibility. But she knows she has proved through her running career that she can handle the changes in her life that are coming and that she will work hard to excel on the cross-country and track and field teams.
This past week, she in Eugene, Oregon, for the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials. She went for a run along Pre’s Trail — made famous by late distance running great Steve Prefontaine — and watched America’s best track and field athletes. Higginson was among them, as she ran in the 3,000-meter steeplechase.
Roche said her goal was to get back to Eugene. Don’t be surprised if in 2020 or later, Roche is following in the footsteps of Higginson once again and is among those racing for an Olympic berth.