SE: No Place I'd Rather Be
Kassidy Johnson writes about her journey to K-State Track & Field.
2/26/2020
I always played sports growing up. When seventh grade came around and school track was a thing for the first time, I decided I wanted to join the team. When I told my parents this, my mom responded with a firm “no.” Understandably so, since I was already playing three other sports – soccer, volleyball, and basketball – and my mom didn’t want to figure out how to make time for a fourth.
Thankfully, my mom is a people pleaser. I’m one of her favorite people to please, so I was eventually able to convince her to let me run. This was, however, under one condition. She was not going to buy me track spikes, because she thought I would quit. I mean, who runs for fun, right? So, I laced up my garage sale spikes and set out to show my mom that this wasn’t just a phase.
I’ll be honest. At first, I mostly wanted to run track because my friends were, and I had FOMO (fear of missing out). I also didn’t really love running, but I did love winning. Now, I didn’t finish every race in first or with a new personal best, but since track is an individual sport judged by a clock, it quickly became a really good objective measure of self-improvement for me. That is what hooked me.
Fast forward a few years to my junior year of high school, where I decided I wanted to run in college. Being from Kansas, Kansas State had always been a school I was interested in, so I decided to contact the middle-distance coach, Ryun Godfrey.
I finally mustered up the courage to call him and told him my times, you know, really tried to sell myself. He listened, let me finish and then basically in a really nice way told me I was too slow. He was right. I didn’t like that answer, though, so that year I decided to train for track in the winter instead of playing basketball. This ended up paying off and by the end of my junior year, I took 10 seconds off of my 800 time and came away with a few state titles.
I didn’t finish every race in first or with a new personal best, but since track is an individual sport judged by a clock, it quickly became a really good objective measure of self-improvement for me. That is what hooked me.Kassidy Johnson
Not too long after, I got a call from Coach Godfrey. This conversation was different than the talk we had eight months prior, however, as he told me he wanted to have me out for a visit to K-State. It became obvious pretty quickly that he had no recollection of our first conversation – and I was not about to remind him. After a few visits, I ended up committing.
I’m sure I could’ve committed to a school with shiny new facilities or a super cool location, maybe a hydraulic track overlooking the ocean or whatever it may be, but I don’t think I could have committed to a school with better people. Cliché, I know, but it’s true. Things haven’t always been smooth sailing since I got to K-State, but it’s truly the support of the people here that kept me going and are the reason I am where I am today.
The support I received from my coaches, athletic trainers, teammates etc. was more than I ever could've asked for.Kassidy Johnson
After our first two track meets during my freshman year, I set out for a long run and was stopped a few miles in by sharp pains from my foot shooting all the way up my leg... second metatarsal stress fracture. Translation: my foot was broken, and I would not be racing again that year.
My main goal going into freshman year was to prove myself to my coaches in hopes that they didn’t regret recruiting me and investing their time and money into me. It was a terrible mindset, but that’s where I was at. So, when I got injured before I really had a chance to do that, I prepared myself to be forgotten about and just become another number on a roster. I mean, I was there to run, and I could hardly walk. I had no value, or so I thought. I was, apparently, the only one that thought that, because the support I received from my coaches, athletic trainers, teammates, etc., was more than I could’ve ever asked for.
It was their belief in me, my recovery and my comeback that allowed me to believe in myself and ultimately played a huge role in the improvements and successes I found the following year.
Going into my junior year, I was so excited to see how my performance could improve following a full year of solid training and competing. This excitement came to a halt when MRI results showed yet two more stress fractures only a couple weeks into the cross country season.
When your identity is tied to your sport and your sport is taken away, life gets tough. Knowing that I had overcome injury before and had immense support should’ve made this time around easier, but I couldn’t help but worry that things would be different the second time. Surely they’d give up on me now, right?
Nope.
Things like Coach Ryun seeing me mid-bike workout on his drive home and deciding to stop and run alongside me during my never-ending hill repeats.
Things like Nichole Henderson, our trainer, offering to sit with me on a Saturday while I ran alone for 90 minutes on the underwater treadmill after she had already been at cross country practice for three hours, or Katie LeMair, our dietitian, who went above and beyond to find nutritional ways to help prevent the injuries from happening again.
Things like my teammates reaching out to check on me and cheer me up with little gifts, baked goods, coffee dates or words of encouragement. They weren’t just doing their jobs. They were caring for me as a person. They were showing me that even when I couldn’t join the team for practice, they still saw me as a part of it. When I felt worthless, I was shown that my worth wasn’t synonymous to my performance – or lack thereof.
I have a lot of goals left to achieve, but there is nowhere else I would rather pursue them.Kassidy Johnson
This isn’t meant to be a sob story – I am by no means the only person who has faced injuries in sports – but rather a thank you to Kansas State for giving me a second and third chance, and caring for me as a person rather than just an athlete.
It’s kind of crazy that I ended up running track at all, let alone at Kansas State, but it’s even crazier that I am still running today.
I have a lot of goals left to achieve, but there is nowhere else I would rather pursue them. I know between the support I have back home and here at Kansas State, anything is possible as long as I never give up. It will be a journey, but I am here for the ride.
