First Posted: 1/7/2015
Less than a year ago, Regan and Ally Rome were still running together in a Dallas track and cross country program where their mother Amy coaches on the junior high level.
In the past few months, Regan and Ally have kept piling up running accomplishments and the family has learned the different feeling of sharing those special days through technology while separated by hundreds of miles.
Ally celebrated the biggest accomplishment of her running career as she wrapped up her junior season in high school cross country on the first day of November in Hershey.
Regan was in Boston, warming up, just about to get started on her first college postseason, which opened the door for the biggest opportunity of her career. Regan had her phone with her throughout the warm-up process for the Colonial Athletic Association championships and learned about Ally’s Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association Class AA state championship before heading to the starting line.
“I had my friends texting me updates,” Regan said while home in Dallas before heading to Saturday’s BUPA Great Edinburgh XC Challenge in Scotland. “She had a great season.
“It was good to know that everything was going well back here.”
Everything was going well for Regan as she traveled the country with the William & Mary cross country team, using performances in Boston, Louisville and Terre Haute, Ind. to put together the credentials that placed her on Team USA for the event in Scotland. The 4,000-meter women’s junior race in Edinburgh included a U.S. team of three high school seniors and three college freshmen. Regan made it after having the third-best NCAA Championships finish by a U.S.-born true freshman.
While Ally was still celebrating her state title that day in Hershey, Regan, the CAA’s Rookie of the Year, was running to a fourth-place individual finish and helping William & Mary to the conference team championship.
At lunchtime on a Friday afternoon almost two weeks later, Ally and Amy, a long-term substitute math teacher at Dallas, were in school monitoring results from the NCAA Southeast Regional in Louisville. William & Mary upset four higher-ranked teams to win the region and secure the spot at the NCAA Division I Championships.
Unlike an individual win where Ally led the field to the finish line in Hershey, team titles in cross country are tabulated by combining the place finishes of all runners. In a close race, an agonizing process takes place while runners, coaches and fans stand around waiting for scores to be compiled and revealed.
While Regan and her teammates waited for word in Louisville, Ally and Amy hit refresh repeatedly on Twitter and live results feeds. Finally, a picture of the scoreboard popped up on the screen, showing William & Mary in first place.
“It’s definitely a lot harder,” Ally said. “I love when I can still watch her race and she loves it when she can watch me race. It was definitely the best when we were on the line together.
“Thank God for technology now. She sits by her phone and I sit by my phone when we’re racing. That’s my main priority at that point.”
While Regan is in Scotland along with William & Mary coach Stephen Walsh and her new teammates and coaches with the USA junior women’s national team, her family plans watch on an Internet television feed at a friend’s house.
The race is scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 10 with Team USA running against Great Britain and Team Europe.
“This is a really big step for me,” Regan said of her first national team appearance.
Before heading to Scotland, Regan visited friends and former teammates. The specifics of each of their training workout regimens made it hard to do much running together, but she stopped at the school, including at indoor track practice.
The accomplishments by Regan and Cornell University freshman Dominic DeLuca serve as an inspiration to the runners still working their way through one of the state’s most successful schools in terms of producing distance runners and teams.
“There was very little doubt in my mind that when she went away to college that she was going to do some even more amazing things,” Dallas track and cross country coach Matt Samuel said.
Rome is also a member of the indoor track team in the winter and the outdoor team in the spring at William & Mary. After Scotland, she will prepare for indoor track meets and the USA Junior Cross Country Championships in Colorado in February.
