MORGANTOWN — Keri Bland will owe a great debt of gratitude to Nancy Myers Starsick and Cara Parrish if she qualifies for the U.S. Olympic team next month.
Nancy Starsick and Cara Parrish? The Olympic team?
Bland can thank them for her All-America honors as well.
What’s this all about?
Well, Keri Bland, the outstanding sophomore distance runner at West Virginia University, is eligible for the U.S. Olympic trials since she finished as the sixth best American runner in the 1,500-meter finals in the NCAA Track and Field Championships out in Des Moines, Iowa, last weekend.
And Nancy and Cara? They are two former North Marion runners who helped to talk her into coming out for the Husky cross-country team as a high school junior.
Little would she know what a difference that would make in her life. Since then, she’s won two West Virginia state high school championships and earned All-America status three times.
“It’s been crazy,” Keri said.
Bland explained about her friends talking her into joining the Husky team in her junior year in high school.
“They were friends. Nancy is married now. They were both runners. They had run in middle school. I had run some track in eighth grade, but not the distance events. I ran the sprints and hurdles.” But she said they kept after her prior to her junior year to join the cross-country team.
She’s glad they did.
“I always thought volleyball was a lot easier. To run three miles — I thought I would die,” she says now. “Running wasn’t for me. I thought of it as a means to train for other sports. Or as a punishment. If you did something wrong in basketball, you had to run. I thought of it as a punishment.”
And what does she think of it now?
“I can’t believe it when people don’t think it’s a sport. It’s so much fun, and there is so much competition. It’s just like any other sport, but people don’t look at it like that.”
Bland has earned All-America honors in cross country and track. She said she likes them both and can’t really choose a favorite.
“I like different things about each of them,” she said. “In track, I like how it’s about time. Anyone can run a 1,500 race anywhere in the world, and you can compare times. A track is a track, no matter where it is.
“But cross country courses are all different. I like being out, going through the woods. I’ve run some very interesting cross-country courses.”
Bland trains under coach Sean Cleary and will begin training in earnest next week after running low mileage this week. The Olympic trials will be held in Eugene, Ore., on July 3,4 and 6.
The top three in the finals will qualify for the Olympics.
How does she expect to fare out in Eugene?
“I hope to go out there and run a really good time,” she said. “If I don’t make it, I hope to be able to go again in four years. I was hoping to set a personal best in Des Moines, but it was more about the pace you ran and not about your time. But I was only one second off my P.B. though.”
The Fairview native believes her accomplishments of the past weekend in Des Moines was her biggest to date. “The cross-country nationals were big, but this seemed a lot bigger,” she said.
She takes pride in her accomplishments.
“Only five Americans beat me Saturday,” she said. “I was the sixth American. I would say that was big. Next year I hope I can come back and do even better.”
As for her honors, she said she didn’t expect them to come so quickly.
“I didn’t expect so much so quick,” the 5-2 Bland said. “They say I’m the only woman at WVU to ever win three All-America honors in one year.”
She still has two years to go.
E-mail John Veasey at jcveasey@timeswv.com.
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Olympic hopeful
Former Husky runner continues to shine at WVU
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