The transformation of Erica Simison

In the annals of breakthrough athletic performances, perhaps kept -- hand-written, of course -- in a notebook by Atalanta, it hardly registered as a ripple, the race that Erica Simison had at Mount Tahoma Stadium in Tacoma on the final day of the Washington state track and field meet in May.

But you know what they say about small ripples and how one day they can gather enough energy and momentum to become a wave, to be felt long after and often faraway from where they first appeared.

This one, born in western Washington, made landfall in Missoula this fall, unexpectedly powerful. That's the only way, really, to explain the metamorphosis undergone by Simison, a less-than-confident athlete not even six months ago but now the top-performing cross country runner for Montana.

Her history -- she had a ho-hum PR in the 3,200 meters of 11:07 -- suggested she had no business entertaining the notion that she could run that day with Katie Thronson, the Lewis and Clark senior who is now a freshman at Tennessee. Same track, same race, different athletes, or so everyone thought.

Or with precocious Issaquah freshman Julie David-Smith, who entered the 4A final that day with a seed time from districts of 10:38, or Lake Stevens junior Taylor Roe, whose time from districts was 10:36 and who loved to go Prefontaine on everyone and bury them early with a ridiculously fast opening pace.

Ah, but the mind can be a powerful force. And at the same time it has the potential to be an athlete's greatest limiter if allowed to go unchecked, generator of doubt and why-nots.

"Nothing is a close second to the mental side," says Montana track and field coach Brian Schweyen, whose heaviest lifting each winter and spring isn't coaching technique to dozens of athletes across different events, from track to field. It's convincing them of what they are capable of achieving.

Simison was unburdened that day, her mind no longer in the way. She had raced the 1,600 meters two days before, finishing fourth in a time of 4:55.48 that was just off the Eisenhower High record.

She had committed to Montana, and now she had one final prep race as a Cadet. Who cares if she had a seed time of 11:36 from districts, which had her ranked 16th out of the 17 runners toeing the line that day? Who cares what people thought or if they had her pegged as a non-threat?

Everyone had to run the same eight laps. That was the only rule. How each runner did so was up to them. So she did a little channeling of Pre herself.

"If I go out and die, so what? There wasn't a good reason not to go for it. I decided I was going to go with (the race leaders) and try to hold on for as long as I could," she says.

Simison opened some eyes when she finished first for the Grizzlies, seventh overall, at the season-opening Clash of the Inland Northwest in late August.

She would improve upon that with a sixth-place finish at the Montana State Classic two weeks later, then place fourth at the Montana Invitational.

And none of those performances likely would have occurred had she not had the race she did in Tacoma that day in May, when she was essentially transformed as an athlete, from one who raced with doubt and preconceived ideas of where she fit in to one who now competes with confidence.

Eisenhower coach Phil English knew what Simison was capable of -- "The workouts indicated she could run that fast," he says -- even if his star runner hadn't always believed it.

"I'm a really good trainer. I train super well. I competed in workouts way better than I did in races," said Simison, another athlete, and it's not uncommon in track and field, who had her best performances outside of meets, at practice, when there is no pressure and going for it comes with minimal risk.

That is, until that afternoon in Tacoma, when everything changed for Simison.

The leaders ran the opening 1,600 meters in 5:27, Simison among them. Then those around her turned it up. Roe dropped off the pace. Soon all that was left at the front was David-Smith, Thronson and Simison, who surprised the other two by running in their shadow.

"I kind of shocked Katie Thronson. When she went to go around Julie David-Smith, she kind of bumped into me, like she wasn't expecting anyone to be there," Simison said. "She looked at me and I was like, Hey, I'm trying to win too! It was pretty exciting."

It was Simison's first time truly contending for a win at a major state race, in cross country or on the track. She wasn't supposed to be in this position. But what if she was? Is this what was possible once she got out of her own way?

The three runners entered the final 200 meters with a 10-second lead on everyone else. They were running neck and neck (and neck).

It was the final distance race of the day, and the fans were ready for some drama. They had it. And for the first time, the roar of the crowd wasn't for other runners in one of Simison's races. She was one of those being cheered for, one of three being carried to the finish line by an appreciative audience.

The second 1,600 meters was done in 5:08, the final 800 in 2:24. "Just an exceptional race and exciting to watch," said English. "And she was a stride away from winning it."

Thronson won in a time of 10:35.39. Simison (10:35.65) and David-Smith (10:35.83) were both less than half a second behind. Simison didn't win, but she collected something maybe more valuable than a gold medal that day. A belief that she could run with anybody.

"It's a huge reason I came into this season with so much confidence. It really carried over," says Simison, who will race with six teammates on Saturday morning at Haggin Oaks Golf Course in Sacramento at the Big Sky Conference cross country championships.

"First, that race speaks volumes about Erica," said Schweyen. "Second, it's a lesson for any athlete, that if you have the mindset that you have nothing to lose and you're going to put it all on the line, great things can happen.

"A lot of people are afraid of putting it all on the line, particularly in distance races, because it's going to hurt and it's not fun, but with the right mindset, all those other things get diminished when you get that big reward at the end."

It's not the only transformation Simison has undergone since May. She's had to get used to running with girls for the first time after training her entire high school career with the boys. She's had to adapt to Pounds' more nurturing style of coaching after years and years of English's tough-love approach.

And she's used the move from Yakima to Missoula to redefine herself in ways she says would even shock her own mother. She's no longer pigeonholed as Kevin and Bryan's little sister. Or even Eric and Pam's daughter. She's Erica Simison, individual, and she likes what she's becoming.

"I'm a completely different person here than I was in high school," she says. "It's been nice to have a fresh start. No one knows what you were like before. Now it's like, okay, this is actually who I am.

"I didn't go to any games or socialize very much. I wasn't as outgoing as I am here. I was really boring. People wouldn't recognize me now."

Erica Simison: Poster child for the repressed, the millions of us who have used college not necessarily as a continuation of high school but as an opportunity to start anew, no longer held in sclerotic place by others' expectations and assumptions.

Her first career race didn't portend greatness. But she was only in the second grade, allowed into the Sunfair Invitational's kids race -- for third to sixth graders -- because people knew who she was, at a time when being Kevin and Bryan's younger sister had its perks.

"I was just happy I didn't walk any of it. My parents were always super proud of my brother whenever he ran, and I wanted them to feel proud of me too, so I started running," says Simison, who would also play competitive tennis through the eighth grade.

Eric and Pam have never been runners, but Eric's background as a competitive cyclist may have produced some of the genes that got his three kids into running. Kevin, who's a decade older than his sister, got things started.

"She's been knocking around the program for a long time," says English, who has been coaching high school track and field in Yakima for nearly 40 years and turned Bryan, who would compete for New Mexico State, into a Division I runner.

"The thing that always stood out about Erica was her desire to be good and to compete at the highest level. There was never a question of whether she wanted to be good."

That required an approach that's probably not that unusual at the high school level, to see a lone girl running with the boys during their training. There just wasn't anybody else at Eisenhower High who could hang with her.

"She made life miserable for a lot of our second-tier boys who she was consistently beating in workouts," says English. "It wasn't something they were probably expecting, but they took it well. They're going to remember her."

She was held up as an exemplar by English to the rest of the girls' team at Eisenhower, which didn't win her many friends and why she's still getting used to being part of a tight women's team at Montana. Don't blame her. She's just never experienced it before.

There were other, albeit smaller, hurdles to overcome as well, when she did her first group run with the Grizzlies in August, the kind of challenge most of us wouldn't expect to face.

"Boys' conversation on runs and girls' conversation are two very different things, with a lot of it having to do with maturity level and humor," she says. "It was something I had to adjust to."

So the boys at Eisenhower didn't soften things on her account? "Oh no, definitely not. I just grew accustomed to their humor. I miss running with the guys, but having relationships with these girls, social-wise, is great."

Her hometown is not known for its affluency. More than one in five in Yakima live below the poverty level, and 75 percent of students in the Yakima school district qualify for free or reduced-priced lunches.

It may be a childhood spent growing up in Ireland or lessons learned as a standout track athlete himself at Washington State or four decades of coaching.

Or perhaps English's hard-edged approach to his position is because he knows an athletic scholarship might be the only way some of his athletes will ever step foot on a college campus.

Without it, they might add to the statistics. With it, they might start to change them or use the opportunity as a way out.

"It was a really intense program, and I loved it," Simison said. "He pushed us to be the best we could be. For a lot of kids, that was their chance to go to college, so he pushed us to our absolute limits."

That's been another big change for Simison.

After her breakthrough 3,200-meter race last May, English walked up, patted his star runner on the head and said, "Good job, little one," then walked away.

It's the type of feedback she's been conditioned to expect. So it came as a surprise when Pounds greeted her enthusiastically after the Montana State Classic with a big hug.

Neither approach is right, neither is wrong, just two different ways for a coach to express him- or herself.

"I'm used to tough love, and I liked the tough love," Simison says. "I'm letting this ride and seeing how I adjust to it. I had a huge amount of trust with my high school coach. I know my relationship with Vicky will develop over time. But their coaching styles are different."

Yes, some of Simison's transformations are ongoing.

She was a late recruit for Montana and wasn't even on the coaching staff's big board of prospects until the day Simison reached out to former Griz runner Reagan Colyer on Instagram, which opened the lines of communication.

She didn't make a campus visit until last December and eventually chose Montana over Idaho and Eastern Washington.

She spent the ensuing months checking the Grizzlies' performances, particularly those of the distance runners. She wanted a program where she could be competitive but not be the best. At least not right away. It wasn't the pressure she didn't want. She just needed to earn anything that came her way.

"I wanted to move my way up over time. I'm not saying I don't like being the top runner, but I was looking forward to working my way up. It feels like more of an accomplishment in a way," she says.

But fate stepped into the picture. Emily Pittis, All-Big Sky Conference at last fall's championship race, was injured at regionals and was still on the mend late in the summer. And Jessica Bailey, the team's other alpha, was dealing with her own injury when the Grizzlies reported to campus.

It wasn't long after they arrived that they headed over to Moscow for the Clash of the Inland Northwest, Simison as unfamiliar with her new teammates as they were with her.

And it wouldn't have mattered if Pittis and Bailey had been at full health anyway, not as far as Simison was concerned. When it comes to races, you compete for yourself, which is at odds with Pounds' power-of-the-pack preachings.

But again, it's not Simison's fault. It's a byproduct of being the top runner on a high school team, one that needed her to go out and do her best, on her own, then return with as many points as possible.

"It's always been about myself. Not in a conceited way, but I'm going to focus on myself, and that's how I'm going to contribute to the team," she says.

"It's been hard adjusting to pack running. At that first race, Vicky told us to stay together. Right from the gun I took off. Maddie (Hamilton) said, 'Okay, let's settle,' and I just kept going," all the way to a top-10 finish.

The training -- which finally caught up to her after asking Pounds if it was challenging enough in those first days -- held her back at Lewiston two weeks ago, and she finished behind Bailey and Samantha Engebretsen, two upperclassmen who have had years to adapt to Pounds' training plan.

But now it's championship week, and everyone should be at their peak. Simison has hopes to finish in the top 25 on Saturday, but there have been plenty of indicators that she is capable of much more than that.

That's part of the excitement of having an athlete like Simison, who is confident from her past results but not overly so.

"She is very serious, very competitive, but she isn't putting too much pressure on herself, which is good," says Pounds. "When you're running No. 1 as a freshman, she could put a lot of that on herself, but she's handled it very well."

Not unlike that race five months ago in Tacoma, when Simison played it cool, with a nothing-to-see-here, don't-mind-me approach to the biggest race of her high school career.

If she keeps it up, she won't go unnoticed for much longer. And down the road, when she competes for a Big Sky championship, either in cross country or the steeplechase, when she is no longer one stride away from winning it, then you'll know the transformation of Erica Simison is complete.

University of Montana Athletics

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Jessica Bailey

Reagan Colyer

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Emily Pittis

Erica Simison

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