Running Has Always Been Family Affair for Cantrell

Katy Cantrell has done just about everything a middle-distance runner can do in one lifetime.

She's participated in three high school state meets, competed in prestigious invitationals and even run through most of Europe, including in several countries that were Communist at the time.

But there's one thing Cantrell, a Drake High Class of 1982 graduate who now lives in Murphys in the Sierra Nevada foothills, couldn't do earlier this school year. She couldn't help coach her oldest daughter's cross country team.

"As a teenage daughter, she didn't want me training with the team. I guess she felt embarrassed," Cantrell said of 14-year-old Hannah, a freshman at Bret Harte High in Angels Camp. "I went to all her meets, and by midseason, most of her teammates asked for me to run with them and give them some tips.

"By end of season, she had embraced me."

Now Cantrell has a new goal – to keep up with Hannah and her mates when she serves as a daughter-approved assistant coach next season.

Actually, that shouldn't be a problem. Even though Hannah is a state meet-level runner – she finished 58th out of more than 200 runners at last weekend's cross country championships in Fresno – mom has some pretty stellar results herself. And that's not including the recent Turkey Trot she won.

Katy Dykstra, as she was known then, was quite an accomplished runner at Drake, leading powerful cross country teams to three Northern California Section championships in the fall and qualifying for the CIF State Meet in track three times in the spring.

"I did well with it, but I was never really very mentally passionate about it," she said of cross country, a sport she was "encouraged" to try by Drake track/cross country coach Bill Taylor. "I had big dreams in the 800 meters or maybe 400 meters. But I had more talent in longer distances like the 1,600 meters.

"I didn't embrace it back then, but I figured it out as an adult."

Cantrell was plenty good at whatever distance she tried. So good, in fact, she earned induction into the Marin High School Athletic Hall of Fame last month alongside fellow Pirates Mike Hayward and Doug Donnellan, as well as Terra Linda's Maura Campion, Tam's Michael Fowler and Roy Rice, San Rafael's Megan O'Connell, Drew Miller and David Wylie, and Novato's John Panagakis.

"I was greatly honored and humbled by my induction. It's been an incredible experience," she admitted. "It was really fun to see some of the other athletes who had been inducted. You recognize the names from when they were written up in the newspaper."

Cantrell, whose 12-year-old daughter Heidi also is a runner, said she learned something about herself in the company of greatness.

"I don't really race now, but every once in a while I get talked into it," she said. "I say I'm just going to go out and take it easy. My kids laugh at me when I say that.

"I can't control that beast inside. There's something about winning. It's something that's innate. That's probably what drove all of us (Hall of Famers)."

Certainly, Taylor recognized it in Cantrell. She credits both her old coach and former Drake athletic director George Lewis for making a great high school experience possible.

"When I first started running at Drake, most of pictures that show a team, I'm head and shoulders smaller than my teammates," she recalled. "Those years, my goal always was to beat my teammates, because they were very talented.

"My junior year, I grew some and got stronger. Then I set my sights set on coach. He'd run for USC and qualified for the Olympics. It became all about beating Bill.

"My junior year was my best year. At that point, he was trying to keep up with me."

Cantrell didn't always win, but it's no surprise when you consider the competition.

She recalled competing at night for the first time at the talent-rich Bruce Jenner Classic at San Jose City College, watching at the Cow Palace after running her mile as Steve Scott scorched the competition at the same distance at the San Francisco Examiner Games, and going up against – and almost beating – national record-holder Polly Plummer at an invitation-only competition in Arcadia that followed the state meet.

"It was George Lewis who really allowed me to run in a lot of those invitationals," Cantrell noted. "The funds were not always available. He really supported what Bill Taylor was doing.

"I was really proud to be a representative of Drake High School."

Cantrell, who has worked at a winery in the foothills the past six years, even credits Taylor for her recent Turkey Trot win, saying her coach took such good care of his athletes, she never got hurt and never felt overtrained.

In a sense, the former San Anselmo resident has been running downhill ever since scaling Mt. Tamalpais as a youth.

"The first race I ever ran was the Dipsea," she said of Marin's most famous race. "I got talked into it by a family friend. There were a bunch of us running. I thought we were going to run together. Then I remember someone saying, 'We'll see you at the finish line.'

"Somehow I made it over the hill. My dad was ecstatic to see me at the finish line, because I beat some of his 30-year-old friends."

It remains to be seen how her daughter responds when mom beats some of her teenage friends next season.