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| VSU tennis player and cross country runner Juliana Boehm. (Brandon Powers | The VDT) |
While she is still an active member of the women’s tennis team, she is also making a rather large impact on the Blazer cross country team this fall.
After joining the team in August, Boehm has competed in four meets with the Blazers, winning two of them and placing in the top 20 in all four. She has also been named the Gulf South Conference’s Runner of the Week on two separate occasions.
Not too bad for someone who had never run in a competitive race before joining the team.
“I just loved running from early on, I had just never done it in a competition,” Boehm said. “I just ran by myself.”
Boehm was discovered by a member of the cross country team, who happened to see her running on her own. That runner put her in contact with head coach Todd Smoot.
“One of the runners on the cross country team ended up seeing her run and joined her on a run and he came back and said, ‘She is good and is somebody you should explore,’” Smoot said. “So we discussed it a little bit, she expressed interest, and she ended up running a race in the spring, just a road race and she did well. I gave her a program over the summer and she followed it.
“It is obvious that she has some natural talent,” Smoot added. “Tennis is her first love, but she is also a very good runner.”
Like nearly everything, there was a learning curve to running in a competitive format compared to running for leisure activity. The hardest thing for Boehm was getting used to running in a pack with other runners being within elbow distance.
“Definitely, it was pretty hard for me,” she said. “That and pacing my time.”
Boehm learned what running in a pack was all about in her first-ever meet, when Smoot forced her to run with teammates in the middle of a large group for the first mile of the race. While running in the pack, a runner from another team pushed her to the ground, costing her valuable time.
“I’ve always said cross country is a contact sport,” Smoot said. “Somebody in that race — I think I know who it was — did not like something. And it wasn’t like (Juliana) was doing something wrong, it was just she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She regrouped.”
The tumble to the ground didn’t matter. Like Smoot said, Boehm regrouped. She collected herself, caught her teammates, passed her teammates and went on to pass every other runner in the field to win the UT Early Bird Classic in Tampa, Fla. with a time of 19:24. She won by more than five seconds.
“I just wanted to finish ahead of 20 minutes,” Boehm said. “And not be last. I did not want to be last. I didn’t expect to be first.”
Following the win, Boehm garnered her first Runner of the Week award, joining Jordanne Helton, a standout runner the previous four seasons, as the only female cross country runners under Smoot to be named Runners of the Week.
“It is kind of weird, I have never won anything for tennis and I have been playing tennis since I was five,” Boehm joked. “The first year in cross country and I have already got two Runner of the Week awards. It is pretty cool.”
A few weeks later, Boehm raced out to the front of the pack in the third annual GSW Remembrance Run. This time, Boehm managed to stay on her feet for the entire race. The end result was another win.
She finished the 5K with a time of 19:22, a mere two minutes ahead of the second-best female finisher.
“The competition was not what we had anticipated the competition to be,” Smoot said of the race. “It was basically a time trial for our runners. But she did a fantastic job running faster than she actually did down in Tampa.”
The following run, Boehm learned a valuable lesson in conserving energy when she became tired at the end of a meet down at West Florida, says Smoot.
“She learned a very important lesson,” Smoot said. “That if periodically you don’t manage your energy very well, you get really, really tired at the end. Somebody I know got really, really tired at the three-mile mark and still had a 1/10 of a mile left.”
Much like she did in her first race when she was pushed down, Boehm regrouped from her tired finish at West Florida when she and the rest of the Blazers displayed their talents against Division I runners at the Florida State Invitational in Tallahassee.
Despite running against experienced Division I athletes, Boehm was able to put everything together. She shined when she finished 19th overall (fifth among Division II athletes) in the 6K event with a time of 23:01.
The performance earned her a second GSC Runner of the Week award.
Now, Boehm is preparing for the Gulf South Conference Championship Meet this Saturday in Birmingham, Ala. She is the favorite to win the race on the spectator-friendly course the runners will compete on.
“If she runs it her best, yeah I would think she has a reasonable opportunity if she gives it her best and puts it all together,” Smoot said. “I think there is a chance of (her winning).”
Regardless of how she finishes this weekend, Boehm is still a rare two-sport athlete that has a busier schedule than most adults.
After attending class all morning, Boehm heads to tennis practice where she works with her teammates to improve on her 10-4 singles record and 11-9 doubles record from a year ago. She then heads to cross country practice where she works with Smoot.
“With Coach Hansen being so kind as to share her with us, we are not going to interrupt her tennis. We know which sport is number one for he,” Smoot said.
Following this weekend’s run in Birmingham, Boehm will likely be eligible to compete in the NCAA Regional Meet. Once she completes the cross country season, she will rejoin the Blazer tennis team in the spring.
-Follow me on Twitter at @Ed_Hooper
