Emry Schwalm fixated on the hair in front of her and fell into lockstep with it. She felt reassured by it, like she was in control despite appearances. Since she started running competitively just four years ago, she has told her parents that she likes “tracking down ponytails.” Two of them were bobbing a couple steps ahead for most of the Thursday at Jeffco Stadium.
She waited for the last 300 to make her move.
When there’s nothing in sight except open space, the feeling can be aimless. Disquieting.
The Heritage High School senior finds it far more comforting to stare down a target — a reminder of why she does this.
“For me,” Schwalm said, “itap mostly that I’m so competitive, and I love races.”
Her competitiveness has taken her to unpredictable places. After taking up singing as a hobby, she once applied to the Denver School of the Arts. Not because she wanted to enroll. “She just wanted to make it,” said her mom, Kara. “And check that box.” She did make it. That was enough.
It guided her to a late-blooming career as arguably the best high school distance runner in Colorado. She didn’t dream of cross-country stardom and Division I offers when she was younger. She didn’t spend hours training to become a state champ. She lived next to Heritage in Littleton and decided to wander into the cross-country team’s summer training program before her freshman year, motivated by memories of her endurance as a soccer midfielder and curious whether she was good enough to hang. Soon, she was running with the varsity girls.
“She would always come from dive practice to our workouts in the evening that summer,” her friend and teammate Caroline Fender said. “It was pretty funny how she wasn’t fully bought into it yet.”
“I don’t think this talent was at all something that I expected,” Schwalm said. Her surprise was only eclipsed by her parents’ — they never could’ve guessed she would fall in love with the sport.
On Thursday, her competitiveness dropped her into the final lap of the 3,200 with ground to make up. It was all part of the plan. Before the race, her mom had reminded her to breathe out there. High stakes could mean high anxiety. But Kara was practically hyperventilating from the pre-race nerves as she offered the advice. “She looked at me, like, you breathe.” This was Emry’s domain. She turned on the jets late and decisively pulled away from Cherokee Trail freshman Madison Lange, who won two titles at Adidas Track Nationals last summer.
Lange’s got next in CHSAA Class 5A, but this was Schwalm’s moment — a three-second victory at 10 minutes, 26.19 seconds. She was just as delighted to see Fender finish sixth.
“I think one of my strengths in racing is definitely once I hit a pace, being able to stay at that pace,” Schwalm said. “So for me, it was mostly just finding that front of the pack and following their lead. Taking whatever pace they were taking it at. Because then I knew that I wasn’t going to be (in a position) where I’m having to push my own pace. So for that last 300, thatap where it came down to: This is my race now.”
It’s taking her to Wake Forest next. For most of her recruitment, she had the University of Alabama penciled in as her decision. But a weekend visit to Wake’s campus in Winston-Salem, N.C., last October sold her on the smaller school, which still competes in the ACC.
“First day we landed, she had to go do a run,” her dad, Eddie, recalled. “And she came back and was like, ‘That might’ve been the prettiest run I’ve ever done in my entire life.’ So that was a good start.”
By the time he picked her up from the dormitory where she was staying at 6 a.m. that Sunday morning — they had an early flight home — she didn’t even wait for him to ask what she thought of the place. “This is it,” she said. She committed the next day. She plans to major in kinesiology and exercise science.
“Seeing how the teammates interacted and the environment they created,” Schwalm said, “it was the most fun and supportive place I’ve ever been.”
There was unfinished business back home first. She finished fourth place in the 3,200 last year. As she accelerated down the final straightaway toward a triumphant ending to her Heritage career, her dad tried to sprint 200 meters down the concourse, alongside her.
“I was nervous I was gonna hit somebody,” Eddie said. “but I couldn’t help it.”
He ran honorably, but he couldn’t catch the ponytail in front of him.
