Earlier this month, Elizabethton High School track and field standout Heather Feuchtenberger ran a race that she will not soon forget.
Feuchtenberger made the trip to Houston, Texas where she competed in the 17-to 18-year-old girls’ 800 meter race of the 2016 AAU Jr. Olympics. The EHS senior crossed the finish line with a time of 2:20.97, which was good enough for an eighth-place finish and a medal. And Feuchtenberger was pretty excited to say the least.
“I was super excited,” she said. “I was just so relieved to be done, because I was so nervous before that race. I have never been that nervous. It is just such a huge meet. I was excited to be done, and excited about how well that I did.”
From New Jersey to Philadelphia, Feuchtenberger ran in a field that consisted of 11 other girls from all over the United States, and that fact was one of the driving factors of Feuchtenberger’s nervousness. However, Feuchtenberger believes that racing against such an elite group of runners will help in the long run as she heads into her senior season on the Lady Cyclones track and field team and the cross country team.
“I think this will help me a lot,” she said. “Just to run with them and check out the different strategies. Every race I have ran against elite runners like this helps every time. Just to get used to that. Because running at the high school, at a lot of those meets, there is not that elite competition like there is in college and toward the sectional and state meet.”
One of the more trying things about Feuchtenberger’s race in Houston was the heat. During the races, the temperature rose to the 100 degrees mark, making racing condition a little tougher than normal.
“The heat was definitely a factor,” Feuchtenberger said. “I was able to handle it better than some of the other girls. I mean, I saw people passing out and stuff. Honestly though, I wasn’t really thinking about that as much as other things. It was hard to handle. Overall, I think I handled it well.”
During the actual race, Feuchtenberger was thrown a curve ball. Like most top-level races, all the runners clumped together into a group during the race, and about half way through, one of the runners fell directly in front of Feuchtenberger. However, with a hop, she was able to get back in stride and run to the finish line. Elizabethton High School coach Leslee Bradley, who coaches Feuchtenberger in track and field during the school year, pushed and motivated Feuchtenberger over the phone during the week of the race. Bradley said she got to see a live stream of the race, and that it is extremely hard for a runner to maneuver around a fallen racer, while keeping stride.
“It is real hard,” Bradley said. “Right at the halfway point of the race she had a girl go down right in front of her. She almost had to come to a stop to get over her. So that was really hard to do.”
Feuchtenberger said that dodging the fallen runner was a very trying part of the race, but said it just comes with the territory when running in a race at that level.
“The fall was very intense,” she said. “All I could think to do was keep running.
It has been a big year for Feuchtenberger, who set some school recorders during last season’s track and field meets. On Apr.2 at the Tri-Cities Track Classic at Science Hill, Feuchtenberger broke the 400 meter record with a time of 59.78. In the 800 meter run, the Lady Cyclone tied the school record with a time 2:22.7 at the Tennessee High All Comers on Apr. 13, before eventually setting and breaking the record with a time of 2:18.66 at the TSSAA Class A-AA.
She is just really fired up on running right now. She should be because she had a really great year.
Bradley said that Feuchtenberger’s run at the Jr. Olympics is a great way for the runner to continue her running hot streak.
“It is really a big deal,” Bradley said about Feuchtenberger’s Jr. Olympic medal. “Especially for a rising senior. The AAU is divided up by age so she was in that oldest age bracket where the runners are the strongest. To go and compete with girls at that level, and to have to go through the qualifying races to get to the finals, where you are just surrounded by top talent from all over the nation, it really was a big, big deal.”