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Desiree Stinger ran her first race in hot-pink Crocs. She was 10 years old, and when she got dressed that morning, she had forgotten that the fourth-grade fun run that looped around her elementary school was that day. She wanted to win, even in those awkward shoes, and burst ahead, ignoring the pleas of a friend—“Desi, wait for me!” Classmates were left huffing in her wake as she claimed first place.
Stinger’s parents and her P.E. teacher saw the win as a glimmer of big things to come. She continued to run, off and on, with her middle school team. After clocking a 6:32 mile in eighth grade, she caught the eye of Doug Soles, the cross country and track coach who had taken Great Oak High School in her hometown of Temecula, California, from not qualifying for the state championship to winning it. Over the next few months, Soles emailed Stinger and her family repeatedly, and girls from the high school team crashed her middle school graduation party to drop off a T-shirt and a list of 10 reasons she should join the team. Stinger was overwhelmed. She had a vision of herself playing volleyball in high school, or doing theater. But the persistent requests from Soles eventually wore her down, and she plunged into the life of a distance runner on one of the country’s top-performing high school teams.
At the time, Stinger was 14. By the end of her freshman year, her weekly training would begin with a 13-mile run on Monday morning before school. In the afternoons, she and her teammates would usually return for another six miles. Experienced runners on the team averaged 60 to 80 miles a week. Some parents didn’t think twice—to be the best, the thinking went, you need to do more than the others.
But Stinger’s father, Craig, grew nervous. Distance running, he felt, could be “brutal” on the body. While he worried about Desi’s physical and mental health, he also wanted to support her and her Great Oak team. “How I looked at it was, we’re part of their program, so we’re following their program,” he says. “But at the time you don’t know how much of a toll it’s taking.”
Soles often spoke to his runners about “finding their why,” or the inner fire that would motivate them to run at an elite level. He was known for lengthy motivational speeches and would meet with runners individually at lunch so they could set goals and talk about running. He made runners feel important, and when he’d call a group of newbie freshmen “my future state champions,” they believed it. “Our coach had our full and undivided trust,” Stinger says. As her times improved, so did her trust in him. “Whatever he said, we did.”
Stinger’s father became a one-man support squad. To ensure his daughter was fueling well, he would hand her a protein-packed smoothie when she came home from practice. To treat her sore, depleted legs, he kept 10-pound bags of ice in the freezer for nightly ice baths. To prevent fatigue, he instituted an early bedtime of 9 p.m. Stinger embraced these habits; once she joined Great Oak, she never wavered on her commitment.
During her high school years, from 2012 to 2016, Great Oak won four state championships and placed second at Nike Cross Nationals. Stinger graduated with seven varsity letters and a sub-five-minute 1600-meter time, securing her an athletic scholarship at Washington State University. But she arrived in 2016 with a nagging pain in her lower leg. She felt tired, unable to run anywhere near her high school times.  Desiree Stinger ran her first race in hot-pink Crocs. She was 10 years old, and when she got dressed that morning, she had forgotten that the fourth-grade fun run that looped around her elementary school was that day. She wanted to win, even in those awkward shoes, and burst ahead, ignoring the pleas of a friend—“Desi, wait for me!” Classmates were left huffing in her wake as she claimed first place.
Stinger’s parents and her P.E. teacher saw the win as a glimmer of big things to come. She continued to run, off and on, with her middle school team. After clocking a 6:32 mile in eighth grade, she caught the eye of Doug Soles, the cross country and track coach who had taken Great Oak High School in her hometown of Temecula, California, from not qualifying for the state championship to winning it. Over the next few months, Soles emailed Stinger and her family repeatedly, and girls from the high school team crashed her middle school graduation party to drop off a T-shirt and a list of 10 reasons she should join the team. Stinger was overwhelmed. She had a vision of herself playing volleyball in high school, or doing theater. But the persistent requests from Soles eventually wore her down, and she plunged into the life of a distance runner on one of the country’s top-performing high school teams.
At the time, Stinger was 14. By the end of her freshman year, her weekly training would begin with a 13-mile run on Monday morning before school. In the afternoons, she and her teammates would usually return for another six miles. Experienced runners on the team averaged 60 to 80 miles a week. Some parents didn’t think twice—to be the best, the thinking went, you need to do more than the others.
But Stinger’s father, Craig, grew nervous. Distance running, he felt, could be “brutal” on the body. While he worried about Desi’s physical and mental health, he also wanted to support her and her Great Oak team. “How I looked at it was, we’re part of their program, so we’re following their program,” he says. “But at the time you don’t know how much of a toll it’s taking.”
Soles often spoke to his runners about “finding their why,” or the inner fire that would motivate them to run at an elite level. He was known for lengthy motivational speeches and would meet with runners individually at lunch so they could set goals and talk about running. He made runners feel important, and when he’d call a group of newbie freshmen “my future state champions,” they believed it. “Our coach had our full and undivided trust,” Stinger says. As her times improved, so did her trust in him. “Whatever he said, we did.”
Stinger’s father became a one-man support squad. To ensure his daughter was fueling well, he would hand her a protein-packed smoothie when she came home from practice. To treat her sore, depleted legs, he kept 10-pound bags of ice in the freezer for nightly ice baths. To prevent fatigue, he instituted an early bedtime of 9 p.m. Stinger embraced these habits; once she joined Great Oak, she never wavered on her commitment.
During her high school years, from 2012 to 2016, Great Oak won four state championships and placed second at Nike Cross Nationals. Stinger graduated with seven varsity letters and a sub-five-minute 1600-meter time, securing her an athletic scholarship at Washington State University. But she arrived in 2016 with a nagging pain in her lower leg. She felt tired, unable to run anywhere near her high school times. |
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