It was last spring when West Potomac cross-country and track and field coach Don Beeby decided that then-sophomore Julianne Bigler’s situation had gotten so drastic a meeting of the minds at the Bigler household was in order.
Beeby had watched as his once star-freshman had battled through two major ailments that left her helpless in terms of competitively running over the course of the 2007-08 school year.
“We really were at rock bottom,” said Beeby. “She didn’t compete in a single meet. She was so energy-starved and battered and beaten. It was very depressing and she was thinking about quitting the sport."
And who could blame Bigler for wanting to end the pain? A fractured hip that just wouldn’t seem to heal had made running impossible and to make matters worse, Bigler had just found out she was iron deficient to the point that her ferrum count was at levels usually seen only in chemotherapy patients.
“I would cry when I got home from practice because I could not do what the other people on my team had been doing,” said Bigler. “I had been a state competitor the year before. It was really hard for me. I was close to just dropping it altogether.”
<b>RUNNING CAME NATURALLY</b> to Bigler, as she picked up the sport on a whim the summer before her freshman year at West Potomac.
Bigler was persuaded to join a running club headed by one of her middle school teachers, and ended up participating in the George Washington Parkway Classic as a result.
And without much in the way of training, Bigler finished sixth in the 19-and-under age group, a result that caught the eye of Beeby. The coach then invited Bigler to come up to Northern Michigan with the rest of the West Potomac cross-country team as part of its annual trek to an 11-day running camp.
“She was new to the program, hadn’t done any running, clueless to what she was doing, and did well,” said Beeby.
The early-season preparation only enhanced what was clearly some natural talent and endurance. As a freshman with less than six months of competitive running experience, Bigler qualified for the 2006 Virginia State Championships and finished 92nd, a development that still surprises the now-junior.
“I ended up being good at it,” she says with a shrug and laugh these days.
<b>BUT WHAT LOOKED</b> like early success quickly transformed into the type of sophomore slump that no runner can control.
After a season spent on the sidelines, Bigler could have easily called it quits, something her coach feared might happen as a result of that fateful meeting. The star runner had other ideas.
“I decided to work through it because I knew I couldn’t have this hip fracture forever,” said Bigler. “I would come back because there are people who compete really well their freshman year and never come back to it. And I didn’t want that to be me. I just wanted to compete as hard as I could and work as hard as I could to get back where I was.”
She did that and then some during this fall season as a member of the West Potomac cross-country team, culminating in a return appearance at the Virginia state cross country meet held last weekend in The Plains, Va.
With her hip healthy, a somewhat dialed down training regimen at first, and plenty of iron supplements, Bigler was the lone Wolverine to make it to the state meet, finishing in 10th-place overall. She said her health finally returned to full strength at the end of September.
“I was joking around with everyone that I wanted to have a top-91 finish because I finished 92nd my freshman year, so I just wanted to do better than that,” said Bigler after completing the 3.1-mile course in 18:53.
Bigler’s impressive performances throughout the season have led to some extra notoriety for the already-speedy runner. She will compete in the Battle of the Potomac, which pits some of the best runners from Virginia against their counterparts from Maryland, this weekend. And on Thanksgiving weekend, Bigler will run in the Foot Locker Cross Country South Regional in North Carolina.
Sure sounds like she made the right call after that fateful meeting just six months ago.
“I’ve just been working my way back and it has been so great,” said Bigler. “I never thought I’d get to the state meet or get this far.”