Not all Shook up

U nable to run, former SE star, U.S. record-holder stays involved in the sport

By Mike Genet, Sports Writer, mgenet@advertiser-tribune.com
It’s almost cruel irony.

Briana Shook says her legs are in perfect condition — a far cry from when she competed at the 2005 U.S. Track and Field Championships with the meniscus torn in both knees and a gimpy ankle. Her highly decorated college career as a distance runner, possibly her high school one, as well, came with the left meniscus torn.

But the 26-year-old Shook, a Tiffin native and Seneca East and University of Toledo graduate, hasn’t competed in more than two years. She hasn’t had a chance to reclaim her American record in the 3000-meter steeplechase (9:29.32), originally set in 2004 in Belgium but broken by Lisa Galavaz (9:28.75) three months ago on the same track.

Her knees have recovered completely from surgery, but a mysterious pain in right side of her abdomen, which she first felt in the spring of 2004 and hasn’t been diagnosed despite many attempts, occurs when she does what she loves most — run.

Now in her fourth year as assistant cross country and track coach at Toledo, Shook helps younger runners reach for heights she achieved during her stellar collegiate career. She coordinates recruiting and travel, and she said she’s learning how to motivate from the sidelines, though she’d prefer to be a pure example and use her frontrunning style to push the athletes, showing why one former coach labels her the best athlete to come from Seneca County.

“It’s like when you’re an injured runner and your teammates are out there, you want to pull your hair out,” Shook said. “It sucks, because I know I’m good at motivating by running with them.”

Toledo head coach Kevin Hadsell, who hired Shook after coaching her, calls her a great resource for the girls in the program.

“Wherever we go, people know what she’s done; they know her and respect her,” Hadsell said. “She’s way more organized than me. From an administration standpoint, she keeps it all together.”

‘Bri-fontaine’

It wasn’t a coach who pushed Shook into her frontrunning style — rather, her mother.

Her first cross country races as an elementary student were more about socializing with girls farther back than challenging near the front. Shook said her mother, who drove her to the races, asked her “Why did I come to this race?”

Shook said her mother, Deb Shumaker, told her the winning runners would go out in front and stay there, and encouraged her to try it just once.

“My mom — the funny thing is — she was never a runner,” Shook said. “She would be up near the finish line cheering each runner as they came in.”

Shumaker said she always felt that if Briana or anyone else was doing something, it should be with 100 percent effort.

“Not that you always have to be the winner,” she said. “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. One hundred percent might win one day, but not the next.”

So, a year after finishing in the back as a fourth-grader in a Tiffin Carnival elementary race, Shook won the same race.

“I realized I didn’t like to lose,” she said.

Ron Martin, then the physical education teacher at Clinton Elementary, encouraged her to run cross country after seeing her “blow away” the boys in the 600-yard run portion of a fitness test.

“She chose to pursue it, was able to maintain it and was able to latch onto good coaches along the way,” Martin said. “But Briana’s good because of Briana.”

When Shook reached her freshman cross country season at Columbian in 1995, her coach was Tim Atkinson, a mentor she lauds to this day because his training program put her on the road to national prominence.

“He was an amazing coach,” she said. “He explained to me what an All-American was in college, how to get a scholarship and how I had to work to get to the next level.

“He helped me learn not to put other people on a pedestal.”

Shook won the Northern Ohio League title and placed second in the state in her first cross country season, then added an appearance at the state track meet. Knowing Atkinson would not be returning to Columbian, Shook transferred to Seneca East, where Martin was the boys cross country coach, and he and girls coach Jeff Phillips ran programs similar to Atkinson.

“The closest thing [to Tim] was Ron, and the girls often trained with the boys,” Shook said. “I made the decision.”

As a sophomore, she was fourth in the state cross country meet, then set a state record (since broken) in the 3,200 meters at state track. She then won the state cross country meet her junior and senior seasons, leading the Tigers to a team title in 1998. On the track she added three more state titles.

“She practiced hard, and she just had lot of natural ability,” Phillips said. “She was always a frontrunner. She just had great form. With her height, maybe some consider her stride a little longer, but she had good form.”

Shook’s tactic of charging in front from the beginning, as opposed to biding time and moving ahead later in the race or at the end eventually led to teammates calling her “Bri-fontaine” — after the late American distance great Steve Prefontaine who made a career of doing that.

“For one, I didn’t like people around me; I was afraid of being tripped,” she said of her style. “It worked out for me; it ended up being my trademark.”



Another change in venue

Shook committed to run Miami (Ohio) University in Oxford in 1999 — a decision she said was made in haste and without much knowledge of the program.

“I didn’t know a lot about college,” she said. “My sister went there, and I had visited the campus. I contacted them. The coach took me on a visit, offered me [a scholarship] , and I said ‘OK.’ I didn’t know for sure and said ‘Yes’ anyway — just being the first offer, I guess.”

Though she placed in the top five at her first Mid-American Conference cross country championships, Shook said the program wasn’t a good fit. After freshman year she transferred to Toledo, where former SE teammate Abby Phillips competed and Hadsell, who had recruited Shook out of high school, had taken over the program.

“I got lucky and got a second chance,” Shook said. “I told my mom if I didn’t do it, I’d probably quit running. I had not gone a day in six years without running.”

Shook graduated in 2004 with a double major in communications and photography, and as an athlete she compiled 11 individual titles among cross country, indoor track and outdoor track, becoming one of the MAC’s most decorated athletes ever. The Rockets won the MAC in her last two cross country seasons (2001-02), and as a senior she became the lone regional champ in conference history and placed 24th at the NCAA Championships.

“She wasn’t afraid to go out at a pace others consider too fast,” Hadsell said. “She started building up her tolerance.”

Shook said she learned to run to the point of exhaustion — and maybe beyond.

“If I wasn’t [lying] on the track at the end of a workout,” she said. “I was mad.”



Add to the repertoire

In her first outdoor season at Toledo, Shook and a teammate begged Hadsell to let her try the steeplechase, a 3000-meter event featuring various hurdles, including a water jump, during several laps around the track.

Shook said Atkinson had resisted her pleas to try hurdling events at Columbian, not wanting to risk injury, and Hadsell had similar trepidations.

“One of my better coaching moments,” Hadsell joked.

When he relented, Shook clocked a 10:45 in her first steeplechase competition for MAC women, easily qualifying for the NCAA Championships. Her long-legged strides made clearing the hurdles easy, and as her hurdling form improved her times plummeted.

She won the 2003 U.S. championship, clocking 9:44.71, and would have repeated in 2004 if she hadn’t missed the first water jump and been disqualified. She ran her American record time two weeks after nationals on July 31, the 9:29.32 proving to be the world’s fourth-best that year.

“Without a doubt she’s the greatest athlete to come through Seneca County,” Martin said. “To hold an American record is far above any accomplishment anyone’s had.”



‘Just want to race’

When she set her American record, Shook was gutting through the abdominal pain she’d been feeling for a few months, and she did much of her training on a bike or in the pool to minimize the sensation. The cycle continued through 2005, when she took fourth at nationals, missing out on a spot at the world championships by one place.

Shook said her left meniscus tear could have occurred as far back as her time playing basketball, which she ended after freshman year at Columbian. The right meniscus tore in the spring of 2005, and a couple weeks before nationals she twisted her ankle when landing a hurdle jump awkwardly.

She had surgery on her knees following the 2005 season, but the abdomen’s been another story, a fruitless venture of tests and X-rays. Doctors even inserted a stint (metal mesh material) in an artery where they thought a blockage could be causing the pain, but to no avail.

Shook said she scours the Internet looking for answers, and she hopes seeing a family doctor in Tiffin could provide a diagnosis that sports doctors in Toledo haven’t been able to give.

“I want to find out what it is,” she said. “I try to be doctor; I’m sure doctors are tired of me trying to self-diagnose.”

Meanwhile, Shook has helped keep the Rockets among the MAC’s elite programs, and they’ll have a chance for another conference title Saturday in Mount Pleasant, Mich.

Hadsell said he’s proud of the way Shook’s stayed optimistic despite not being able to run.

“One commonality among elite athletes is, they’re always putting pressure on themself,” he said. “They think they will be great when healthy. In terms of her sport, she’s young.”

Women’s steeplechase will be an Olympic event for the first time at the 2008 Beijing Games. Shook said she would love to get ready for that, and knows she can get fast enough to qualify — if only she could run.

“My main focus is just wanting to run again,” she said. “There’s something about going out and running for an hour to clear your head. I just want to race … being so hard-core.

“That’s what I miss the most, being down on the track and exhausted for a minute, then just a minute later realizing you’re OK.”