EV Grad Keeps On Running For Ricks College

AnnMarie Adams feels like her hard work is paying off.

Those five-hour daily workouts she fought through all summer? Yeah, they were worth it after all.

The 1998 East Valley graduate walked on to the cross country team at Ricks College in Rexburg, Idaho, this fall with no idea what to expect.

But Adams quickly learned that she belonged.

She finished third in the team’s time trials the first day of practice and was the first freshman to come in.

“When I finished it was a little bit of amazement,” said Adams, 18, who is home for two more days before heading back to school. The team’s first indoor track meet is Jan. 16. She probably will compete in the 800 and 1500 meters.

Vikings coach Doug Stutz said he was pleasantly surprised, too. Fifteen to 20 athletes usually try out for eight or 10 spots, he said.

“She’s determined,” said Stutz, who’s in his 11th year as coach. “In our workouts she was always trying her hardest to be with our top runners right near the front. I figured she’d be in the top five for most of the year.”

He was right.

Adams, who was part of four state champion cross country teams at EV, finished second overall at regionals and was 14th at the November national meet, where Ricks won its fourth straight junior college national championship. Her finish at nationals earned her honorable-mention All-America recognition.

It also helped her nab a $1,000 scholarship for the upcoming semester. Adams found out the Monday after Thanksgiving during a one-on-one meeting with Stutz. “He pulled out some papers and said I needed to sign them,” she said. “I had no idea what they were.”

So Adams, who was valedictorian at EV with her 4.0 grade point average, now will receive athletic and academic aid.

And she’s thankful for that. Her father, Wayne, is a striking steelworker at Kaiser and she would have needed to take out student loans to make it through this semester.

“I consider it a blessing,” Adams said. “It’s just been really amazing. I wasn’t quite sure if I’d be able to get money for college for running and I had to depend on academics at the end of my senior year.”

In fact, it was because of the engineering program at Ricks that she chose the school. She’s studying mechanical engineering now but says she might switch to aeronautical engineering. She plans to transfer to either the University of Utah or Washington State University after two years at Ricks.

And she hopes to continue running. She said she’s running the best she ever has.

“Things are finally starting to pay off I guess,” Adams said. “My senior year in high school I had hoped to have a really good season. I ran more miles than I ever had before and things were going really well until the middle of season. I guess I wasn’t running enough miles.”

She was the Knights’ sixth finisher at the state cross country meet last year, marking the first time she had failed to be in her team’s top-five.

“It was really hard because at the beginning of season I had been winning meets,” she said. “It was hard. I just couldn’t end up that way. I wasn’t sure I would go on to do cross country in college.”

But she at least was going to try out to see how she stacked up.

“I said `What the heck, I’ll try out for the team and if I don’t make it I will have more time to study,”’ she said.

Adams said she was worried there wouldn’t be the same team focus that she knew so well at EV.

“But this came pretty darn close,” she said. “If you feel comfortable with girls on the team and you’re willing to do your best so they can benefit from it, if everyone ends up doing that, there’s no telling where you can go.”