For Lewisburg senior mid-distance standout Kalyn Fisher, everything she does this spring has a purpose -- and for good cause.
If the two-time defending Class AA 800-meter champion wants to maintain her dominance on the oval, she needs to make sure every step she takes is a calculated one. She needs to ensure that every decision she makes has an ends to a mean.
So maybe that’s why she didn’t sign up for cross country this past fall, even though when she enrolls at Penn State University in the fall of 2010 on scholarship that she’ll compete in the sport for the very first time in her career.
In truth, there are obvious reasons and then there are some not so obvious reasons.
For Fisher, it made sense to continue playing soccer with Lewisburg. It was her last year of high school. It didn’t make much sense to give it up. What would her teammates think?
“It’s just because I have been playing my whole life and I didn’t want to give it up the last year I could play it,“ said Fisher, who fittingly was an outsider midfielder, the position in soccer that typically runs the greatest distance over the course of the game. “I love it.”
But then again, she is one talented mid-distance runner, perhaps the best small school girls’ competitor in the state. A two-time -- could-be three-time -- gold medalist in the half-mile. She’s the anchor on the two-time state champion 3,200 relay team. At Penn State, she will feature primarily in the 800 and the 1,500 events.
So yes, she’s good at soccer. But she’s a better runner.
Her dad wanted some answers, so he called Fisher’s track coach, Jonathan Clark, before the fall season. His question was simple: “What should she do?”
“I think she would have run cross country if all I had to say was ‘Yeah, I think she should do it,’” Clark said. “But my question to him always was ‘Does Kalyn enjoy soccer?’
“And he said ‘Yes.’ So I said ‘She should continue to play soccer, because there’s going to come a time next year in college where she’s not going to have that luxury of being able to compete in soccer and do other things.”
In a nutshell, that explains Fisher on so many levels.
Since her freshman year at Lewisburg, when she picked up track for the first time, her life seemed dead set on being some kind of miraculous. You could see it the moment she tied the laces up and started to run. She had the “it” factor. Here was this small, petite runner, yet she was electric and fast and eager to learn.
“I think to start off, she was a very shy athlete,“ Clark said. “She really didn’t know a whole lot about any training. She was just a naturally talented runner. And she had some notions about what she’d like to do that we kind of had to adapt and change and show her where her strengths really lied.”
“But when she bought in to what we were trying to do, she totally believed in everything we were doing for her training wise,” Clark said. “And she is just a great athlete to train. She’s been a career athlete for us.”
That freshman year on the oval was like walking into high school for the very first time. At first, it was big and new and mysterious and a little bit scary. But once she got the feel of it, things started to fall into place.
In most cases, Fisher used her natural speed to beat opponents. Her mother, Kristen, was a gifted runner back in her days at Lewisburg High in the early 80s, running fast times in the 400 and 800, so maybe the genetics had something to do with it.
“Yeah, I think so,” Fisher said, admitting as much.
Ultimately, Fisher was good enough her freshman campaign to set foot in the PIAA Championships, where she barely lost the 800-meter crown. In Clark’s eyes, had she had a couple more meters to go, she would have taken the title.
“The experience factor there kind of played a role,“ Clark said. “I’m not sure she trusted herself to be with the runner of that caliber. That single race, finishing second, might have been a fairly big part of the puzzle in her growth. “
Fisher went on to compete in several highly touted races her sophomore year, including the Pennsylvania Track and Field Coaches Association State Meet on March 1st and Nike Indoor Nationals 14 days later.
In the former, she ran a 2:15.26 800, placing fourth. She followed it up two weeks later with a 2:16.89. As the spring season followed, Fisher dipped her time even more dramatically, winning her first gold medal in the 800 with a time of 2:12.35. Her to-this-day career best came on April 25 at Lock Haven, when she ran a 2:12.19.
“Clearly, she’s got speed,“ said Clark, who’s coached at Lewisburg for 28 years. “She could have walked into anyone’s high school program and been the fastest kid on their team and would have been fairly successful on that level. Her combination of endurance and speed is a rare quantity.”
For Clark, he’s technically had more than a few “rare quantities”. There has to be something in the water in Lewisburg.
Clark has had the pleasure of coaching three NCAA Division I middle-distance runners, one of which, Jill Snyder, was a five-time All-American at Wake Forest. Ashleigh Wetzel came later, graduating in 2003, and proved to be a healthy addition at Vanderbilt University. And just last year, he had Sophia Ziemian -- in the state, she was second in the two mile and third in the mile -- who is now plying her trade at Duke University.
If there’s one thing for certain, Clark knows how to culture a successful mid-distance runner. He wasn’t ready to place Fisher among the best he’s ever coached, but she surely was among the top four.
“You’re looking at a very short list of the best runners that I’ve had,” Clark said. “Kalyn fits right there among them.“
Fast track to Fisher’s senior year and four more gold medals later. Why the need to branch off into soccer when her future is ultimately with running?
The reason for the pseudo-rebellion isn’t an admission of her lack of commitment. It really says more about the mentality she’s adopted since figuring out her elite talent.
For everything that she does, she feels a certain connection with her teammates. Just last week at the Bruce Dallas Invitational at Cumberland Valley High School, Fisher ran a 4:59.96 in the 1,600, her first dip into the sub-5 minute mile club.
It was an accomplishment she and Clark had been gunning in 2010. And it came quite early. With the time, she had the opportunity to run in the prestigious Penn Relay Carnival in late April, held at the University of Pennsylvania every year.
She opted not to do it.
Both she and Clark believe there are better interests that weekend, notably the Lock Haven University Invitational. In truth, she wanted to compete in a meet that would utilize not just her talents but her teammates as well.
“If you ask her what the most memorable moments are, she’ll point to the relays because they are more of a team aspect,“ Clark said. “That’s one of the reasons the Penn Relays might not be as enticing to her. Because she goes there alone, she runs there alone. She comes back. She likes being around her teammates.”
“I like going with my team to invitationals rather than going by myself, because I think I’m less nervous and I know a lot more people than I would know than if I was by myself,” Fisher said.
She has gold medals. She has awards. She has every accolade in the book.
Her life on the track has been one of pristine perfection, a career dedicated to hitting split times, outlasting competitors on the inside and hammering down that last 100.
But what’s it mean if she can’t experience it with someone else?