The injury is truly debilitating to a runner, sprinter or distance. “She would have been in the mix at 5,000 and 10,000 meters,” says Matt Sparks, an Irish assistant coach who works closely with Seidel as Notre Dame’s distance specialist.īut as she intensified an already rigorous training regimen, Seidel developed a sacral stress fracture in the area of her lower back near the tailbone-a broken back, in layman’s terms. The world makes more sense to me when I run.”Ī repeat of her 2015 outdoor success could have established Seidel as a candidate for a spot on the 2016 United States Olympic team for the Summer Games in Rio. If I’m stressed out or confused about something, I’ll go for a run. “I’m one of those people who thinks better when I’m moving. “I love this sport more than anything, no matter what happens,” Seidel says. But nothing has come easy for the Hartland, Wisconsin, native, whose determination and genuine love of running have enabled her to overcome a succession of injuries to her legs and lower back that might have ended the career of a less driven competitor. Taken as a whole, those achievements earned Seidel the Mary Garber Award as the 2016 ACC Female Athlete of the Year. Seidel produced four individual NCAA championships in less than a year. In the fall of 2015, she was the Atlantic Coast Conference and NCAA champion in six-kilometer cross country, a few months before becoming a double winner at 3,000 and 5,000 meters at the 2016 NCAA Championship indoor meet. “It gave me the belief that I might be able to do something on the national level.” “The first one is the one that stands out as something you’ll always remember,” Seidel says. In the spring of 2015, her junior year, a victory at 10,000 meters in the NCAA Championship outdoor meet gave Seidel the first individual title for a female Notre Dame athlete in track and field. But her size has never impeded her from setting and achieving a remarkable set of goals in track and cross country. By football or basketball standards, she is waif-like at 5-foot-4 and 107 pounds. Yet few Irish athletes have accomplished more than Molly Seidel. Physically imposing football stars and agile, long-limbed basketball types most readily come to mind as symbols of the University of Notre Dame’s undeniably rich and famous athletic tradition.
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