Hope Strausbaugh (Logan-Rogersville)
Q: What was your most memorable race/moment?
A: Qualifying for state cross country and track sectionals 4x800 for the first time my junior year.
Q: Who would you consider your biggest competition over your four years?
A: Myself and my times.
Q: What was your greatest accomplishment?
A: Qualifying individually and as a team for cross country state and qualifying for sectionals individually in my 1600 senior year.
Q: If you could do it all over again what would you change about your running career in high school?
A: Take injury prevention more seriously and fight through the pain when I would usually drop back.
Q: What were the most difficult obstacles you had to overcome?
A: Finding my reason and love for running.
Q: What will you miss the most?
A: My teammates and the camaraderie between distance runners throughout the state.
Q: What advice would you give to younger athletes?
A: Don't make running about beating a specific person/time or always being the best. Find love for running and the rest will come.
Q: What influence has your coach had with respect to your performance and overall life goals?
A: My coach is the reason I've achieved all my goals. His workouts and race strategy have been a driving factor behind any success I've had. I have full trust in anything he tells me to do. He is a large part of the reason I'm running in college.
Q: What are your college plans?
A: I will be attending Missouri S&T and running cross country and track. I plan to major in mechanical engineering and minor in biomedical engineering.
Q: Who would you like to say 'thank you' to?
A: I'd like to say thank you to the obvious: parents, teammates, and coaches. But I also want to thank a relentless supporter. When I was a sophomore I had a senior teammate pass away in a car accident. Her mother has continued to attend all of my team's cross country and track meets and it truly means the world to us.
Q: What was the funniest thing that happened during your running career?
A: As odd as it might sound, our girls distance team will pick up dead, roadkill squirrels if we see them on runs(in a bag of course) as a gift to our coach. So we got him a taxidermy squirrel as our senior gift.