By Spencer Anderson
For CharLee Linton, the path to a captaincy position on the WSU distance team was almost nonexistent.
An injury during her senior year at Shorewood High School caused her to miss the Fall cross country season, and she wasn't getting any college offers to go run collegiately. Pete Julian, the Cougar cross country coach at the time, changed that.
“I wasn't the best high school athlete,” Linton said. “I really wanted to go to WSU for school, and when Coach Julian said that he would offer me a walk-on position, I thought I was winning the lottery!”
A psychology major with a minor in business administration, Linton quickly came into her own, especially academically in her freshman year. She professes her love for social psychology and studying why people behave how they do in certain situations.
“I took Introductory Psychology my first semester at WSU and it was my favorite class. And every psychology class I've taken since then I've liked, so I figured that was a good fit,” Linton said.
It was some reverse psychology that helped Linton decided to pursue running over soccer when she was in high school. After having played soccer for more than ten years, her sophomore year was a turning point.
“I was on a pretty good team, and my soccer coach was getting annoyed of me having to miss soccer games or practices for track meets,” Linton said. “He tried to get me to quit track by saying, 'you need to pick one,' and when I chose track over soccer, he was pretty upset. But it actually ended up being a good thing in the long run.”
And long runs are exactly what Linton goes on now. A distance athlete for both the cross country season and the track season, she's constantly competing during nearly every part of the academic school year.
“Cross country season ends before the semester ends, so sometimes I feel like I have to play catch-up,” Linton said. “Spring semester's definitely always really tough because track goes from January to June, but I don't think I've had a professor who was not understanding of or supportive of my athletics. It's just all about time management.”
While she has had to sacrifice some social activities because of her packed schedule, Linton said she enjoys just relaxing with roommates, friends, or teammates during her down time. Fellow distance runner Emily Dwyer is one of Linton's best friends, and the two teammates have roomed together for the past three years: they even share a birthday!
Ultimately, Linton's goal is to spend quality time with her team, both on and off the track.
“It's an honor and a privilege to be considered the captain and get to lead this group of girls,” Linton said. “I just love sharing with the younger runners on the team what I've learned through my experiences because I feel like I'm a completely different runner from three years ago. Being able to share that and help them with their breakthroughs and PRs and stuff is really fun for me to watch and experience with them.”
She has had her fair share of PRs herself. Linton ran the 10,000 meters at the highly competitive Stanford Invitational last year in a school record 34 minutes, 3.69 seconds, and nearly matched it again at the same meet this year, recording a time of 34:05.75. She has continued to climb in the Cougar record books in 2016, running an indoor 5,000 meters at Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Championships in a time of 16:34.89, which ranks seventh in WSU history, and then bettering that time at the prestigious Mt. SAC Relays running a time of 16:31.43, still seventh-best all-time. Linton also ran an indoor 3,000 meters at the Husky Classic in Seattle with a time of 9:35.49, which ranks eighth all-time at WSU.
Linton, along with sprinter Terrance Chambers, were honored at the Athletics Senior Recognition luncheon with the SAAC True Cougar Award, presented to male and female student-athletes who started their WSU careers as non-scholarship student-athletes and who, to their respective teams, define leadership, commitment to excellence and Cougar Pride.
Linton said she can't see herself doing something not running-related in the future. She is interesting in finding some type of high school coaching position once she's complete her degree at WSU. And she's not ready to step out of the competitive limelight either: she's considering running half-marathons in the future. After Linton's list of accomplishments at WSU, who wouldn't believe she'll be successful in everything she takes on?
