GNAC Championships information sheet (PDF)

SEATTLE – She could have fallen into a funk.
 
After a lifetime of playing soccer – including three seasons at Seattle Pacific – Heidi Laabs-Johnson found that particular door closing on her last fall.
 
Did she feel bluesy about it? Well … sure – for a little while, anyway.
 
But it was a very little while.
 
 “My whole life, I had been a soccer player,” she said. “I had to figure out how to rectify that part of me: What's going to fill that void?”
 
Almost immediately, Laabs-Johnson figured out what was going to fill that void: She switched to running -- first on the indoor track last winter, then on the outdoor track last spring.
 
This fall, Laabs-Johnson not only is filling a void with running, she has developed a passion for it. But now, instead of on a pitch or an oval, Laabs-Johnson is loving life on the cross country course.

“There's just something about cross country that speaks to my athletic abilities and the rugged, aggressive athlete in me and the environmentalist side of me,” Laabs-Johnson said. “There's something about it that speaks to my soul.”
 
That message also is coming through loud and clear to the Falcons. Laabs-Johnson, a senior and a native of Salt Lake City, has teamed with senior veteran Natty Plunkett (Bellevue, Wash./Newport HS) for a solid 1-2 front-running punch. That punch potentially could give SPU at least a couple of spots among the top 10 finishers at Saturday's Great Northwest Athletic Conference Championships in Yakima.
 
The regionally-ranked Falcon women take off from the Apple Ridge Run starting line at 10 a.m. for their 6,000-meter race. The men, also regionally ranked, follow at 11 with their 8,000-meter event. A top-five finish in the team standings secures a trip to Spokane for the NCAA Division II West Regionals on Saturday, Nov. 5.
 
“I'm so excited – there's something about postseason that is just a different energy about it,” Laabs-Johnson said. “I'm excited for us as a girls team and a guys team – we're both ranked in the top 10 (regionally) this past week, which is awesome.
 
“For myself, I feel like I'm peaking at the right time. There's a good energy,” she added. “You have to approach postseason in a different light. During the (regular) season, you know there's going to be competition next weekend. Postseason, you do well enough to go on, or you're done. You have to approach every race like it's your last race.”
 
MAKING THE SWITCH
But first, Laabs-Johnson had to approach cross country coach Erika Daligcon and track coach Karl Lerum about joining their programs.
 
“People said she loved to run and she killed everyone else in any kind of fitness running test,” Daligcon said. “She went out of her way to contact me when she decided that was the move she wanted to make, and I was very appreciative of that.
 
“I knew she was athletic, so I thought, 'Well, let's give this a shot and see.'”
 
Making the quick changeover from soccer to track (soccer season ended in the middle of last November; indoor track started in the middle of January), Laabs-Johnson enjoyed some initial success. She was a provisional qualifier for and ultimately ran in the GNAC indoor mile, picking up two critical points with a seventh-place finish as the Falcons edged Simon Fraser by 6½ points for the conference crown.
 
Then in the spring, she was a provisional conference outdoor qualifier in the 1,500 and the 5,000, chose the 5K, and came within six-tenths of a second of getting into the points.
 
“I knew track season would be a transition time of her learning how to run for the sake of running, not running because you have to,” Daligcon said. “She had some frustrating moments because she wanted to see success right away – that's the type of persons she is. I told her, 'I'm not upset by your performance. I know you want more, but we all have to put in our time.'”
 
Between the end of track and the start of cross country, Laabs-Johnson did put in the time and the miles. Furthermore, this classroom wiz (a 3.8 GPA double-majoring in dietetics and nutrition/sports & exercise, and minoring in exercise science) paid close attention to her running teachers.
 
Sometimes, that teacher has been Daligcon or Lerum. Other times, it has been experienced teammates such as Plunkett and Alli Cutting.
 
 “Natty was who they had me working with right away when I came last winter,” Laabs-Johnson said. “She was great, letting this newbie tag along with her. She was really pushing me and really being understanding.
 
“At the beginning of (cross country) season), I used her experience and trusted her experience. She's a strong runner, and she knows what she's doing, so I said I'm just going to stick with her.”
 
As she got more seriously into cross country training, it was Cutting who offered a tip that Laabs-Johnson said has been immensely beneficial.
 
“I used to be terrible at downhill running. I have pretty bad knees, and downhill would kill my knees,” Laabs-Johnson said. “One of our training days at Discovery Park, we do a 1K repeat segment that goes down into this gulch and up – and Alli would just fly by me. I said, 'Alli, how do you go so fast downhill?' She said to get on my toes, lean forward, and let the gravity pull me down.
 
“This summer, I utilized it, and that's probably one of the reasons I've been able to make huge gains.”
 
FINE VIEW AT THE FRONT
Huge gains, indeed. In her first six races, Laabs-Johnson has finished sixth, second, third, 17^th (at the high-profile Sundodger Invitational in Seattle), 18^th (at an NCAA pre-regional meet in Spokane) and 10^th.
 
That last one was at the Charles Bowles Invite on Oct. 1 in Salem, Ore., when the Falcons got to compete all of their top runners in the same race for the first time this season. And it was Laabs-Johnson at the front of the SPU pack with a time of 18 minutes, 20.19 seconds for the 5K race -- faster than her best 5K on the track (18:27.54). The performance earned her GNAC Athlete of the Week honors.
 
“I've tried to go out faster and trust that I can hold that pace and that I'm strong enough to stick with that pack,” she said afterward. “If there was a girl in front of me, it wasn't just keeping her in my sight. It was catching her and passing her.”
 
She'll turn out for indoor and outdoor track one more time before graduating next spring. But even after her Seattle Pacific days are done, Laabs-Johnson says she'll still be running.
 
“The first endeavor I'd like to achieve after college is a marathon,” she said. “I would love to run the Salt Lake City Marathon. I've gone to it a bunch of times. And I really want to get into trail races. That's something I would enjoy doing.”
 
Laabs-Johnson said she might even play soccer again if she can find a team in a competitive women's league, because the game “still holds a special place in my life.”
 
But now, so does running.
 
“You have this best-case scenario, and God's plan always ends up being better than your best-case scenario,” she said. “One door closes and another one opens – that's what this whole transition has been.
 
“Whether it's what you wanted or needed at the time, the new door always seems to present something better.”