SE running great to enter OATCCC Hall of Fame

If Briana Dean's husband and daughters are a little taken aback by what happens tonight, you can't blame them. They only know her as a wife and mother, a former college coach who now owns and operates a dog and cat boarding facility. They know back when she was Briana Shook, she ran cross country and track in high school and college, and that she did pretty well. Today, they'll understand just how well when the Ohio Association of Track & Cross Country Coaches inducts her and five others into its hall of fame in Columbus. "To be honest, I didn't know that there was an Ohio hall of fame for cross country and track," Dean said. "It was just kind of a shock and exciting. They told me it's extremely hard to get into. You can get nominated, but it has to be voted on and they said it's extremely challenging to get so I'm just excited that I made it." Current Seneca East girls cross country and track coach Matt Schock said he was surprised when he found out Dean wasn't already so honored. That was a big oversight in his opinion so, as the district representative for the coaches association, Schock nominated her. She joins two prestigious groups. The first is the hall of fame itself. Just six people are inducted each year from athletes and coaches from boys cross country, girls cross country, boys track and girls track. The second is more local. She's just the second Seneca East person and the first athlete to be inducted into this hall of fame. The other Seneca East member is former boys cross country coach Ron Martin. "The group that does get elected is elite," Schock said. "There are some great ones who apply but may not get in right away, but Briana had the resume to be a first-ballot hall-of-famer. "A lot of times you'll see people that do eventually get in have been on the ballot for multiple years, and this was a first-ballot hall-of-famer, no questions asked," he said. That's what should surprise Dean's family. "My kids and my husband, they don't know me as a runner," Dean said. "My husband met me long after running was done, so he's heard of the accomplishments, but not all of them. It's not why he fell in love with me, that's for sure. And my kids, they're kind of young and I think they'll be surprised to see and hear about it." There's plenty to hear about. She qualified for the state cross country and state track meets all four years in high school, making it to both her freshman year while at Columbian before transferring to nearby Seneca East as a sophomore. She claimed the Division I runner-up spot in cross country as a freshman and ended 15th in 3,200 that year in track. It only got better from there. Dean finished fourth as a sophomore for Seneca East at the Division III state cross country meet, and never lost a high school cross country race again. She won the individual state title in 1997 and 1998, guiding the Tigers to second as a team in 1997 before helping them capture the team championship as a senior. Track held even more honors for her. She helped Seneca East win the 4×800 title on the first day of the 1997 state track meet, then returned to the oval the next day to capture the 3,200 crown in a state meet record and Division III state record time of 10:59.81. The record stood until Minster's Sunni Olding, also now an OATCC hall of famer, broke it seven years later. As a junior at state, Dean helped the 4×800 team take third while she ran second in the 3,200 and won the 1,600. She capped her senior year by claiming both the 1,600 and 3,200 state titles. While she did the work on the course and track, Dean said a lot of success had to do with the support she received, from teammates to coaches to the community. "I knew that the running program there was so good," she said. "To have a team that could work out with me every day and push me was something that I needed, and that's exactly what I found there. "Attica, it was just surreal. They say that it takes a village to raise a kid, but seriously, to raise an athlete kid is hard," she said. "You put in a lot of hours as a parent, as a coach, and it was just this community that came together to make sure that we succeeded. That was so fun and awesome. I would do it in a heartbeat over again." Success continued after high school, though not as quickly. For starters, Dean began college at Miami University, but soon transferred to the University of Toledo because, she said, UT's program was a better match for her. It paid off. By the time she graduated in 2004, she won 11 Mid-American Conference titles and had three runner-up finishes, helping the Rockets win the MAC cross country title twice. She also ended as a three-time All-American in both cross country and track, and is still part of — either individually or as a relay team member — eight current University of Toledo team records. One record she set was a mark for American women — she ran 9:29.32 in the 3,000-meter steeplechase in 2004. The time stood as the American women's national record until Jenny Berringer broke it at the 2008 Olympics. Dean is still the 13th fastest American woman in the race. Though she was the standard bearer for American women in the race for a few years, Dean said the event didn't exactly come easily to her. "At first, I would go to the meets and get my butt kicked, because it was a new event for women. I would be dropping time but I wasn't the best right away and I knew I wasn't going to quit until I knew I was the best at it," she said. "It was just so awesome to just slowly — probably more quickly than it felt — but slowly keep getting better and better at it and understand that event because it's so different than just straight running on a track. "You're jumping over barriers and you're jumping over water and I am not the most coordinated person so there were a lot of times where I would hit my knees on the barriers," Dean said. "I had never done hurdles in my life so I was just lucky enough to have really long legs and the barriers were short enough that it was more like I was stepping over them quickly. "It was fun to learn a new event and I think that was probably why I did so well in it — it was a new event in my life that was still distance running but it was something new and exciting and so it just made me want to master it," she said. After college, Dean became an assistant coach at UT for four years, helping one of her runners earn All-American honors. Dean then went back to Tiffin to coach at Heidelberg from 2010 to 2013. While there, she was twice named coach of the year and helped 13 athletes earn All-American honors, including two national champions. She then stepped away from coaching to spend more time with her family, then met her eventual husband in 2016 when he visited Columbus for a tool convention. Their long-distance relationship turned into marriage and they moved outside Mexico, Missouri, where he runs his mechanic's shop and she runs Dean Dog & Cat Boarding. "Not saying that I didn't enjoy coaching, because I did, but I think starting this boarding kennel I realized where my next passion lies," Dean said. "I love working with animals. I think that I was someone who was really good at running and who enjoys helping people get better, but I was never at the coaching level of some of my coaches, where it was their complete life and they sacrificed so much. I tried, I really wanted to see if I had that ability, but it didn't come as fluently or as easily as it did to the coaches that I had." But coaching hasn't totally left her. Starting this year, she will help coach the community cross country program in which her 7-year-old daughter participates. "It's the most exciting thing that I've ever witnessed outside of being a runner myself," Dean said. "I'm so excited because I feel like I do a much better job with the little kids."