FAYETTEVILLE -- Arkansas Razorbacks women's track and field Coach Lance Harter knew he had a special athlete when he heard she could walk on water.
Freshman Taylor Werner, last winter's SEC Indoor 5,000-meter champion and SEC Indoor Freshman of the Year, doubles down in the 5,000 Thursday and 10,000 next Saturday as Arkansas defends its SEC Women's Outdoor championship Thursday through Saturday in Columbia, S.C.
SEC champion Arkansas' second finisher in the 2016 SEC Cross Country Championships in the autumn, Werner then flabbergasted her coach and herself as the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville's first national finisher placing an All-American 16th in the 253-women field at November's NCAA Cross Country Championships in Terre Haute, Ind.
"I never would have thought that would happen my freshman year," Werner said. "I was hoping for top 40. Getting 16th? I was shocked."
By then, Harter wasn't further flabbergasted by his freshman from St. Genevieve, Mo. He's still recovering from Werner's overachieving December 2015 national fifth-place high school finish at the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships.
"She ran Foot Locker and was fifth and was mad as a hornet," Harter said. "She goes, 'I came here to win it.' But I guess considering the situation ..."
The situation?
" 'I only ran two runs in the last month because I've been hurt,' Harter said that Werner told him. 'I've been running in the water.'
"I said, 'That's all you've done?' She said, 'Yeah, I cross-trained because I had a shin problem.' I said, 'We can fix the shin problem.' The rest, no worry. This girl, she's fierce."
Werner's high school cross training wasn't rehabbing in the typical pool. She strode across the pond on her family's rural property.
"It's 20 to 26 feet deep, a small lake/deep pond kind of thing," Werner said. "I put an aqua diving belt on. It's pretty much a life vest, and you just run across the lake."
So you did walk on water?
Werner laughed.
"Yeah, basically," Werner said.
Harter secretly was encouraged by her easily remedied injuries' origin: overwork.
So Werner became among the few in distance running to train less mileage in college than high school.
"I'd tell people that and they would say, 'You're serious?' " Werner said. "In [St. Genevieve] cross country, I got up to 80 miles a week two weeks in a row. Here I've only gotten up to 65 miles. They taught me here if something hurts, you need to tell people whereas in high school I just kind of masked it like I had to run hard all the time."
Now she only runs her hardest when she must, such as the 15:51 NCAA Regional qualifying personal-record 5,000 she posted at the Bryan Clay Classic, plus aiming to win the SEC 10,000.
"I asked her what she wanted to do for the conference meet," Harter said. "She said, 'I'll do whatever I can to score the most points.' Definitely a big heart and real mature."
Sports on 05/06/2017