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Raffin Reports:
Megan  Goethals poised for big year

Rochester High School’s Megan Goethals begins the 2009 cross country season definitely as our state’s number one high school female distance runner. Let’s hope by season’s end in December (for those elite runners), Goethals will again rate as one of the nation’s best. Last year as a junior, Goethals won the Michigan Division 1 cross country championship at the Michigan International Speedway in 17:10, the fastest time ever run for a female in a state final race. In addition, on the track last spring, Goethals won the 1600-meters in 4:51.2 and the 3200-meters in 10:37.50 at the Division 1 finals. Two weeks later at the Nike Outdoor Nationals ran, she covered the one mile in 4:51.53 and the two mile in 10:20.25  And last fall she won the regional Foot Locker title in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and placed third in the Foot Locker national finals in San Diego, California. That gave a lot of championship running for one girl from Michigan.

During cross country season a year ago, Goethals averaged about 45 miles per week, and she begins this season with a build up from early July to middle August to 50 miles a week. For the third straight year, she spent a week at a cross country camp in Wolverine, Michigan, where she ran 60 miles 

“Last season I was very fortunate’” said Goethals, “ because I trained with the boys, and that team was senior dominated. Now I will  be by myself.”

This year, she has some definite goals. One of them is to go under 17 minutes at the MIS course.

“The state meet course would probably be the one course to get in the sixteens,” she said. “Our home course at Bloomer Park has a lot of turns, and it would be difficult to run in the sixteens there.”

Last year Goethals was shooting for the top ten at the Foot Locker regional and her victory there came as a surprise, but Goethals knows that the second year at the regional Foot Locker does not insure a repeat spot at the national meet.

In addition to running 16:something, Goethals would like to defend her title at MIS and improve on her finish at the Foot Locker championship. Right now she is not thinking about any track performances.

Goethals began her running career back in the elementary grades with a track and field summer program at Rochester Adams High School, where the program was run by Bud Ciccarelli and Larry Adams, distance coaches at Adams and Rochester High Schools.

She continued in track as a sixth grader and dabbled mostly in the sprints, but as she said, “I was not a sprinter, and the 200 was too long of a sprint.”

Then in the eighth grade, her coach asked her to try the distance events, and, “I immediately liked it; I became pretty good, and at the Oakland County Junior High Meet, I won the mile in 5:25, which was a school record.”

But when she came to the high school, she was into basketball. Coach Adams ran her in some junior varsity meets while she trained at home after basketball. She was good enough to run in the regionals and then the state meet where she was the fifth Rochester runner in 40th place (a team place of 32nd) with a time of 19:00 as Rochester placed 5th with 215 points.

And as a sophomore and a full-time cross country runner, Goethals placed 23rd (19th in team scoring) in 18:32 as Rochester won the team championship with 108 points.

“As a tenth-grader I started the season feeling strong, but as the season wore on I was feeling burned out, so after the season my mom took me to a nutritionist, and he found an iron deficiency.”

Goethals then finished her sophomore track season with a fourth in the 1600-meters in 5:00.05 and a sixth in the 3200-meter in 11:01.21 at the state finals.

Goethals is placing her college commitments into the future. She has narrowed her choices to the University of Washington, Illinois University, Wisconsin University, Michigan State University, and Georgetown University, and she has had home visits from Washington and Georgetown.

She said, “They are all good schools, and I’m not leaning any way right now. I’ll visit the schools after the cross country season and make my decision in January and February.”

Rochester’s season will begin in earnest the week of Saturday, September 12th with the West Bloomfield Invitational on the Kensington course, a Tuesday league jamboree on the 15th, and the Spartan Invitational in East Lansing on Friday the 18th.

“I know Shannon Osika will be at West Bloomfield, our league always had strong teams and individuals, and Gabrielle Anzalone will be at Spartan,” said Goethals. “I usually only have one race a week with a total of 12 races for the regular season.”

Even though she lives in highly populated Oakland County, the smooth running champion’s favorite spot is the Pine Creek Trail, which is a converted railroad path that runs from Rochester to Lake Orion.

“And the best part, the trail is not paved,” said Goethalls.

Her favorite early season workout is when coach Adams schedules three X 2000 meters for time. For that workout, Goethalls runs each 2,000 meters in about 7:00 minutes.

The Rochester team does not practice two-times-a-day before school starts. “I think twice a day is counter-productive,” said coach Adams, whose team will open the season in a ten team meet at Oakland University called the Grizzley Invitational on September 4 (Goethals will not run in that meet).

Last spring Goethals ran 16 x 400 on the track with a minute rest where she averaged 74 seconds.

After watching Goethals compete, spectators, coaches, and athletes are impressed with the young runner's sense of pace. She never goes out too fast and is always strong at the end of her races.

“I run and concentrate on my own pace,” mentioned Goethals, who stands 5-foot, 9-inches and loves to eat, but can’t put on any weight.

Her family is very athletic with her younger sister and brother involved mostly in soccer. Her brother, now a junior, is on the Rochester soccer team; one sister is a frosh, who will participate with club soccer this fall and who was the Oakland County frosh 400 champ last spring in 60 flat. The youngest sister also is also involved with soccer.

Coach Adams, who is in charge of Adams track and cross country, said,” I will never be able to coach the ninth grader, and we could use her as our fifth runner this fall.”

Adams plans to challenge the best runner in Rochester High’s history this fall with some workouts that will force his star runner with race performances.

“She loves to run,” said Adams, whose team this year will have two proven runners and two unproven runners, and,  “We are in search of a fifth runner.”

And Adams will be satisfied guiding and following his star runner this fall, and all Michigan cross country fans hope Megan Goethals has as great a year as she hopes she will.

                        (Any questions or comments contact me at draffin13@yahoo.com)