Distance runner
Carter Hamill '05 |
Leaving the competition in the dust
The pile of worn-out running
shoes in the far corner of Carter Hamill’s
dorm room is the lone evidence that one of
the best, brightest and most unassuming collegiate distance runners in the
nation lives there. No medals or All-America
certificates adorn her walls, only the minimountain of identical pairs of spent
New Balance, which serves as an unintentional shrine to the hundreds of miles
she’s logged on the tracks, trails and roads of Amherst. “I just
feel kind of bad throwing them out,” she says, showing more sympathy
for her deceased sneakers than she does for opposing runners.
After only two years at Amherst, Hamill is already an eight-time All-American,
twice in cross-country and three times each in indoor and outdoor track, and
owns more school records than the College Archives and Special Collections.
During her freshman year alone she carried Amherst to a seventh-place finish
at the NCAA Cross-Country Championships, won a national title in the 5k at
the NCAA Indoor Track Championships in a then-school-record time of 17:11.93
and finished third in the NCAA Outdoor 5k at a blazing 16:56.92 clip, yet another
Amherst record.
Her sophomore efforts were equally,
if not more, impressive: 10th at cross-country nationals, the best finish by
an Amherst woman since 1985; sixth in the NCAA indoor 5k, lowering her own
school record by more than two seconds; seventh in the NCAA indoor distance
medley relay (DMR), running the anchor leg en route to a school-record 11:58.68;
fifth in the 10k and fourth in the 5k at the NCAA Outdoor Championships, shattering
two more school records and nabbing her seventh and eighth All-America awards.
Her athletic accomplishments are
already mind-boggling—All-America
finishes in each of eight appearances in national championship events, nine
school records, six team MVP awards and countless All-Conference, All-District
and
All-New England accolades—all before her 20th birthday. Ninth-year head
coach
Erik Nedeau, himself a world-class runner and a bronze medallist at the 1995
World Championships, calls Hamill, “by far
the best woman I’ve coached, without
a doubt.”
Standing just 5-foot-4, the diminutive Hamill didn’t even run track until
her
junior year at the Collegiate School in Richmond, Va., eschewing the sport
in favor of swimming and lacrosse. But she was a two-time Virginia state champion
in cross-country, and the dominant manner in which she won her races peaked
Nedeau’s attention. “By the end of her senior year she had run
18:30 or 18:45
in cross country, but every time she ran
she won by a minute or more,” Nedeau remembers. “That’s what
most impressed me, not her times but the amount by which she was winning. Her
high school coach said she was fairly new to track. To me that meant she had
a lot of untapped potential.”
Nedeau was right. After trailing a trio of more experienced teammates in her
collegiate debut, the 2001 Amherst Cross-Country Invitational, Hamill has been
the top Amherst finisher in every cross-country meet since, a string of 19
consecutive outings, and counting. During her inaugural indoor track campaign,
she smashed at least one school record in six different meets and surprised
everyone by claiming the college’s fourth-ever national championship,
winning the NCAA indoor 5k as
a freshman, which is almost unheard of. The national title remains her crowning
achievement, but she’s continued to
wow track observers ever since. Before
attempting to defend her indoor 5k title
as a sophomore, Hamill ran a blistering one-mile anchor leg on the college’s
distance medley relay team, breaking a school record and leading the team to
a seventh-place national finish. “And she isn’t even a miler,” says
teammate Kate Hamill ’03 (no relation) of Carter Hamill’s performance
in the DMR. “She’s almost strictly a distance, 5k, 10k runner,
and she doesn’t really like running the mile, but she ran a great one
to get us to nationals. She put herself back a little bit for the
5k, but she did it for the team. That says
a lot about Carter as a person and as a teammate.”
As if that weren’t enough, Hamill
doubled her pleasure again at the 2003 outdoor championships, finishing in
the top five in both the 10k and the 5k and
single-handedly leading the Jeffs to a 24th place team finish, despite the
fact that she was Amherst’s lone representative. She ran the eighth fastest
5k (16:45.06) in the history of NCAA Division III and the
10th fastest 10k (34:42.03), and her best running appears to be ahead of her. “From
a coaching standpoint, one thing
I don’t really do is expect,” says Nedeau. “The kids themselves
like to place expectations. But of the runners in front of Carter at nationals
in the 5k, two were seniors, and in the 10k, three were
seniors, and she knows that. The times she’s running now are much quicker
than the times the others ran when they were sophomores.”
In general, the women have stepped up their performance in track an incredible
amount over the past few years. Amherst has had some excellent distance runners
who were historically dominant, but their times wouldn’t even qualify
for nationals now. Hamill is part of a new wave of
Division III runners who realize they don’t have to go to a Division
I school to be competitive. They can go to a Division III, compete, and still
be something other than a runner. “The balance here is just right for
me,” says Hamill, a psychology major. “Meets are always on Saturday
and I’ve been pretty good about budgeting
my time. I think it actually helps having practice in the afternoon and then
having a certain amount of time to get your work done. It adds structure to
your
daily routine.”
Keeping Hamill’s training at a manageable level, guarding against injury
and burnout, has been a joint effort, and Hamill is unwavering in her trust
of Nedeau’s expertise. Nedeau, in turn, is adamant about enforcing breaks
between seasons and says that the ultimate goal is to strategically build her
training so her performances peak at just the right time. “Don’t
worry about now, worry about what’s going to happen in five weeks,” Nedeau
preaches. “As we continue to
increase our training, it’s important to keep instilling that ‘Hey,
it’s the end of
the season that we focus on and there are going to be some rough patches.’ That’s
the joy of running. You sometimes have to slide down a little bit before you
can rise up.”
Nevertheless, it’s quite common for Hamill to run anywhere from 10 to
14 miles a day, supplementing her practices with weight training, pool workouts
and cardio sessions on an exercise bike. Despite her considerable success,
Hamill remains one of the most humble, inconspicuous superstars you’ll
ever meet. “She’s awesome, a really down-to-earth person,” Nedeau
raves. “She looks like she’d be a really good runner, but you wouldn’t
know it by talking with her. We’ll talk about her running, but she hardly
ever talks about it with other people. Running is important to her, but it
doesn’t define her. Her attitude is, ‘I’m
a runner, but I’m also a student.’ ”
—
Kevin Graber
Sports Information Director
Photo: Ethan Nedeau
Amherst
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