Strickland dreamed of nationals
As cliché as it may sound, senior cross-country runner Tiffany Strickland said she never even dreamed of having the opportunity of running in the national championships, but on Nov. 21, Stickland had the best Aggie finish at nationals in 13 years.
“Actually, it never crossed my mind,” she said. “Nationals had never crossed my mind.”
In her first trip to nationals for cross country, Strickland’s time of 21:09.0 was good enough for 98th place, which is the best for a lady Aggie at nationals since Alisa Nicodemus finished 14th in 1992.
“It was a good way to go out. It was a great experience,” Stickland said about the race, according a Utah State Athletics press release.
Strickland never considered running cross country at the college level until her senior year at Orem High School, but once she made that decision, she didn’t even entertain ideas to run for any other school than USU.
“I knew I wanted to come to Utah State,” she said. “If I was going to run, I was going to run here.”
And it paid off for the Aggies, with Strickland’s second-place individual finish at the WAC championships helping lead the lady Aggies to a second-place finish as a team. Then she followed that performance with a tenth place finish at regionals, in what she calls her “best race effort-wise.”
Despite the strong effort she made for regionals, the race was a continual mental battle until finally crossing the finish line.
“Sometimes during the race, I was telling myself, ‘OK, I can do it,'” she said. “And other times during the race, I was telling myself I didn’t want to do it any more. You just go back and forth, sometimes when it’s really, really hard and you’re really struggling and you’re not as focused, you tell yourself you don’t care. But then you know that you do care, so it just goes back and forth. But towards the end, more than anything, I told myself I’ve come this far and I can’t quit now.”
Although cross-country requires excellent physical condition, Strickland said the majority of success is due to mental toughness. And for Strickland, mentally preparing doesn’t just start the day of the race.
“As far as mental preparation, for me, it’s been a season-long process,” she said. “Basically just staying mentally strong is the key for me. As long as I can stay focused the whole race, then I’ll be OK and I’ll have a good race. But if I’m not mentally focused during the race, then it’s over.”
In addition to her supporters at Utah State, Strickland also received a lot of support and encouragement from her younger brother Steven, who ran for USU last year and is currently serving a mission in Kentucky.
“He was a huge support while he was here and now that he’s on his mission, he always wants to know about running. He’s been a big support. It was really fun to run with him and watch him do well,” she said.
All the support, mental and physical preparation gave her a chance to run at nationals.
And helped make her senior season literally more than she ever dreamed of.
-cmoffit@cc.usu.edu