By Christopher Hunt
Shelby Greany could barely speak after the New York state federation championships. The Suffern senior’s eyes filled with tears that she never allowed to venture off onto her face.
Her coach tore into her. She ripped herself. It wasn’t just that she finished sixth but it was the way she ran. She ran like she didn’t belong in the race.
Greany went home, took a shower and sat on the bed. Then she decided that enough was enough. Greany wanted to cry again but refused. She couldn’t do this to herself anymore.
“When you get to a certain level, it’s almost like if you don’t win it’s a disappointment,” she said. “Like if you don’t win then you didn’t do good. So then you put all this pressure on yourself to win all the time and you get so frustrated if you don’t.”
All the doubt and frustration, all the pressure and expectations, somehow she squashed that Saturday at Van Cortlandt – even if only for a day. And she ran the best race of her career, the best race of her life. She finished second at the Footlocker Northeast Regionals Saturday in 17:37.7 on the 5K course, six seconds behind winner Emily Jones of Massachusetts. For the first time in a long time, she just raced. She didn’t think about where she should be or how she should feel.
Greany didn’t analyze. She didn’t compare. She didn’t panic or like allow herself to be wrapped in frustration when the race didn’t unfold the way she wrote the script.
“When I would fall off a leader, I’d just get frustrated and they’d get a little bit away and I’d just get mad and make it worse,” she said. “Then I would start asking myself why is this happening and getting more and more frustrated. By the time I snapped out of it then would be so far ahead there was nothing I could do. I’d be putting so much pressure on myself and then after the race I’d put even more pressure on myself because I didn’t want it to happen again.”
That’s what happened when she fell off the pace at the federation championships and Roslyn’s Emily Lipari, Danielle Winslow of Queensbury and Aisling Cuffe of Cornwall took off without her. Greany never got back in the race after the halfway point.
“I think she ran scared at feds,” her coach Lou Hall said. “Right from three-quarters going into it, she didn’t’ look like herself. She didn’t have that fire in her eye that she has. I saw that.”
Hall also said that Greany has a knack for brushing mediocre races off and not carrying baggage into subsequent competitions. He said that loads of attention from the media and coaches can weigh on a 17-year old like Greany, who earned an athletic scholarship to Providence College.
The pressure had squeezed the fun out of running. In a solitary moment at the edge of her been she decided that she would have fun again and race because she loved to. She would try to win because she wanted to. Not because she thought she needed to. So Hall took her watch away during workouts for two weeks. He told her to stop eyeing her wrist during long runs, trying to gauge her mile splits. Hall told her to pay attention to how she felt. No more analyzing.
When she fell off the pace at the Foot Locker Northeast Regionals Saturday, she didn’t question herself.
“I just stayed calm and went back to my old mentality,” she said. “I said I’m a fighter and I can do this. I can work my way up there.”
And she did. For three years at the Foot Locker Regional, Greany would be fighting for a spot to qualify for Foot Locker nationals. She made it for the fourth time Saturday. But this time she wasn’t holding on praying that no one passed her. She was in it for the win.
“I was like, ‘Oh my God, am I up here? Is this happening?” she said.
“I was just so happy that everything finally fell into place. Everything that I’ve been working for just finally happened.”
And just in time. The Foot Locker Nationals is Dec. 12 at Balboa Park in San Diego, Calif.
Reach Christopher Hunt at chunt@armorytrack.com.