Joining us this week on D3 Glory Days, a CITIUS Mag Podcast Network show, is Shauneen Garrahan Werlinger. Shauneen was not recruited to Amherst College and she had no idea how the process worked. However, after recognizing the strength of the program, she committed to school thinking she’d figure it out along the way. She did.

Shauneen finished 10th overall at her first national championship cross country meet. For reasons we explore in our conversation, she never improved on that placing on the grass.

Track was a different story. As a natural hurdler, she took quickly to the steeple and won her first national championship her sophomore year. Battling injuries her junior year, Shauneen had high caliber performances, but nothing that quite measured up to the standard she had set for herself early. After a drought, those races came all at once. Over the course of one legendary weekend, Shauneen swept the distance events and claimed national championship titles in the steeplechase, the 5,000 meters, and the 10,000 meters.

QUOTES

On the D3 Recruiting Process:

– “To be honest, I was very naive to the D3 recruiting process. I didn’t realize there was a process and asked the coach to join the team after I was admitted so finishing 10th in the nation was unexpected.”

On returning back from Injury:

– “My coach drilled into me that I had to get back for indoor nationals and I think that’s what haunted me in my cross-training sessions. I have to do this for the team, I have to get back for my teammates.”

On being their 4th runner at the national meet that took a runner up team performance by 1 pt

– “I felt so guilty about my senior cross country performance that I thought I cost them a chance at a team title so to see them win the next was great”

On not having a good junior year

On balancing life and running

On whether she thought her college career was possible