Tennessee High alumnae Zaldana runs to the top

BY SPENCER CAMPBELL
BRISTOL HERALD COURIER

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. – It had started so simply.

Her middle school coach, working on a tip from the elementary school coach, approached the North Hollywood, Calif., transplant.

“Hey, would you like to run?” the coach asked.

She was always running, anyway. Why not run for the school?

“OK,” she said.

That’s how Liliana Zaldana started running cross country.

High school cross country at Tennessee High was a breeze. Workouts and practice were cake. The coach always asked if she was ready to run and always gave her plenty of breaks.

Zaldana did well, too. She consistently finished in the top 10 in Big Nine Conference meets and made the state tournament all four years, running a 20:35 in her last attempt.

Her performances were enough to draw the attention of college coaches, like Milligan College’s Chris Layne.

And that’s where things turned sour.

She was good in high school, but untrained and unskilled. That’s just the kind of runner Layne’s program feasts on.

“I would characterize her not so much a lump of clay but as a diamond in the rough,” Layne said. “Somebody whose tools were definitely there, she just didn’t have the background and the knowledge to grow in high school like she wanted to.”

The Buffaloes were an Appalacian Athletic Conference powerhouse, having won the conference every year since 2003, and the campus was only minutes from her parents’ home in Bristol – close enough for laundry runs and far enough away for a little breathing room.

Plus, she was awarded the Betty Goah Scholarship for diversity.

Invited to run for the most prestigious program in the Tri-Cities, perfect location and free money – what’s not to love?

Well, the ice baths, for one.

After Zaldana’s first workout with her new team, Layne ordered everyone to submerge themselves in a nearby cold-water creek.

“First of all,” says Zaldana, “there’s, like, animals in there. There’s crawdads and crap in there. Oh, and dirty water? Disgusting.”

It wasn’t just the ice baths. She no longer dictated her practice routine. Breaks lasted 30, maybe 45 seconds and then Layne put her back to work.

There were two-a-days on Tuesdays and Thursdays, she wasn’t allowed a weekend off, Sundays featured mandatory 9-mile runs and girls pushed her past the breaking point on practice runs.

“When you wake up as a runner, you never feel great,” Layne said. Zaldana became the living embodiment of that maxim.

“‘I’m not a quitter,’” Zaldana told herself. “‘I’m going to finish cross country, but then I am going to talk to the coach and tell him that this is just not working out for me.’”

Still, she had to finish the cross country season.

And, with the achy body came plummeting race times. After the Buffaloes swept the AAC Tournament, Zaldana reached the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics national tournament.

She finished 83rd at the national meet, but set a personal record time of 19:00. The Buffaloes finished third.

As she survived more and more workouts, her body began to adjust to the training necessary to compete in collegiate athletics.

“Her first year she went through a tremendous maturity period,” Layne said. “Lili started to determine the difference between a pain and an injury. She started to understand her splits and what we were asking her to do with her training.”

Zaldana did not quit. After the spring track season, she decided to stick out cross country for another semester.

It’s paid off, for Zaldana and for Milligan, in spades.

Her 25th-place finish at the Blue Ridge Open helped Milligan place eighth – ahead of 12 NCAA Division I teams – while her third-place finish at the Tennessee Tech Invitational gave the Buffaloes the meet championship.

But Zaldana saved her best performance for last. Her time of 18:41.4 at the 2008 AAC Championship beat her previous personal record by 20 seconds, slotted her as the tournament’s individual runner-up and helped the Buffaloes secure their sixth-straight conference title.

“We all work together, but, yeah, I knew that I was going to have to step it up this year,” Zaldana said. “The girls have won the title for the past six years. It’s kind of like a you-have-to thing. We need to [win the AAC]. You don’t want to lose that.”

Zaldana and Milligan will travel to the NAIA women’s cross country national championships in Kenosha, Wis., this Saturday.

After the team lost two of its five top runners in the off-season, Zaldana will have to step even higher if the Buffaloes want to retain their national status.

But if the past year showed Zaldana anything, it’s that things can change.

A body can learn to live with pain. A quitter can become a leader. Race times can be shaved by minutes.

Even the most unthinkable, nasty thoughts can be realized.

“I know it’s weird,” Zaldana said. “But now I catch myself saying, ‘Oh gosh, I need an ice bath. I want an ice bath.’”

|(276) 645-2543