St. Louis runner comes back from ACL injury
By John Raffel
Megan Brown has had special reason to want a successful 2016 track season.
The St. Louis senior missed the 2015 track season after she tore her right knee’s ACL during basketball.
She was top 15 in the cross country regionals last fall, running 20:58.6 and qualifying for the state finals.
So far this season, highlights were a 1:10.2 in the 400, a 2:46.96 in the 800, a 4:39.06 in the 4×400 relay and a 10:45.8 in the 4×800 relay.
Coaches had decided to switch Brown’s events from her sophomore season, when she specialized in the 100 meters, 200 meters, 4×100 relay and 4×200 relay. She went to the state finals in the 4×200 as a freshman.
“I’m doing more mid-distance, distance stuff this year,” Brown said. “With my cross country background, I talked it over (with my coaches) and they wanted me to try some mid-distance stuff because they think I can be really competitive at (those events).”
She considers the 400 as her best event, followed by her 4×400.
“If I stay focused and work hard, we have the potential of qualifying for the state meet,” she said. “It’s hard to say right now. Teams are not set in stone at this point. We’ve only had two meets so far.”
Brown said the strength of her race is her finish.
“I usually try to kick at the end,” she said. “That’s usually where I give it everything I’ve got, the last 100 meters.”
Brown’s junior year of cross country was her best, with a personal record of 20:24. She qualified for state her junior and senior seasons.
For the 2016 track season, she considers herself to be at 100 percent.
“It definitely took some time to adjust over the summer,” Brown said. “When I was getting ready for cross country season, it was hard getting back into it. Going from the best shape of your life to being out of shape was really disheartening. I’d compare my times from my junior cross country season to my senior year and I wasn’t happy with my performance. It made me stronger as a person. It was hard, definitely. It was the most difficult thing I’ve done so far in my life.”
She injured the knee in a basketball game and had surgery. She decided not to play basketball and perhaps risk injury again.
“I jumped up to catch the ball and my knee just gave out,” Brown said.
The track team “is young, we have a lot of underclassmen and freshmen,” she added. “Once they get into the groove of everything, we’ll be strong. We have a lot of potential.”
Brown said her team’s training is “geared for the end of the season for the regionals and state meet.”
Brown started running competitively in the seventh grade. But when her senior season ends, she’ll keep running. She signed last February to run cross country and track and field at Spring Arbor University.
“I really loved the team atmosphere I felt there,” Brown said. “It reminds me a lot of my team back here in St. Louis. I don’t want to go to a large school where no one knows my name.”
When her high school season ends and she gets ready for Spring Arbor, “I’ll definitely put in more miles,” Brown said. “I’ll follow the training plan, get some miles in and definitely weight lift when I can.”
Jay Puffpaff is Brown’s cross country coach at St. Louis and also coaches the boys track team.
“She has done an outstanding job coming back from that tough injury,” he said “It’s a long process coming back from ACL surgery. She’s handled it very well. It’s a tribute to her toughness on how fast she’s been able to bounce back.”