Cross Country, Track
Favorite athlete: Jenny Simpson
Favorite team: Team USA
Favorite memory competing in sports: The whole experience of the PIAA XC State Championships; the atmosphere and the events leading up to it as well as during that weekend were amazing
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: I went to running camp this past summer and our cabin got overrun by ants two days in so we ended up moving to the cabin that the counselors were living in. It turned out being a good thing because this cabin was so much nicer!
Music on iPod: Imagine Dragons, Coldplay, Twenty One Pilots
Future plans: Attend Lehigh University to study chemical engineering and run for their Cross Country and Track teams
Words to live by: “You will never know your limits unless you push yourself to find them”
One goal before turning 30: Be working for W. L. Gore & Associates and exploring different countries around the world
One thing people don’t know about me: I can speak Danish and hold dual citizenship between the US and Denmark
By GORDON GLANTZ
An aspiring chemical engineer, Hatboro-Horsham senior Hannah Knudsen’s mind should not be wired for variables such as fate.
But what about her mother, Sandy, meeting her Danish father, Jens, while studying abroad?
And what about the visit to Keith Valley Middle School by the force of nature affectionately known as “Baker” – as in Hatboro-Horsham cross country and track coach Anna Baker – when Knudsen was a summer away from high school?
At the time, Baker was looking to rekindle a fire under a Hatboro-Horsham program that was losing steam after she had helped lead it to a pair state cross country titles in 2003 and 2004 before moving on to run at Appalachian State.
“When I came back, it was heartbreaking,” said Baker. “The spirit, at least on the girls’ side, was gone a bit.”
And Knudsen – weaned on soccer, a sport she liked but did not love – was open to suggestion.
“It was such a great meeting,” recalled Knudsen, who was impressed by not only Baker’s enthusiasm but also the vibe from the seniors she had in tow. “The team seemed very connected, and they were all so nice to each other.”
That was something she had yet to consistently experience bouncing from one soccer club to the next and not knowing all the players real well.
Knudsen was intrigued but she had promised her father, “Far” (Danish for Dad), that she would try out for soccer first at H-H.
And so she did.
And she got cut.
Some would have gone home and cried, but Knudsen was relieved and elated.
She emailed Baker, who was a keeping a spot warm for her on the cross-country team, and Knudsen went on to be one of the squad’s top three runners as a freshman and just kept going.
“I knew she was going to be amazing,” said Baker. “I just didn’t want to be too pushy.
“We were always strong, but our numbers were down. She is one of the people who brought (the program) back. So many people look up to her.”
Back at home, there was some mending of the fences to be done, but nothing too serious.
“I said, ‘I’m sorry Far,’” said Knudsen, who recently attained dual citizen of the United States and Denmark. “I may not have tried my best, but it was great that I got cut. I thought, ‘Heck, now I can run cross-country.’ It turned out to be the best decision I ever made. It was a sport where I really had a chance to be good. In soccer, I was just an average player.”
Meanwhile, it didn’t take long for “Far” to get into his daughter’s chosen path, as his “signature whistle” and loud words of encouragement in Danish are easily discerned at meets.
“It is like a joke between us now that I didn’t try my best,” said Knudsen, who considers it a victory that she interested her younger brother, Lars, into running at H-H as well. “He is really grateful that I found this sport, which is a sport that I can do in college. With soccer, I could have never done it in college.”
Considering how it all turned out, it does cross Knudsen’s mind that she could have made the soccer team, only to be a spare part.
“There are always ‘what ifs’ and that is a big ‘what if’ for me,” she admitted. “But, you know, if I had been riding the bench, I may have just said it’s not for me and moved on.”
On A Mission
Knudsen is dedicated to training year-round. It is the one downside to traveling to Denmark around the holidays, for example.
Still, she is “heavily involved” in her church youth group at Montgomery United Methodist Church, which involves cookie sales around Christmas and chocolate around Easter. And eye-opening mission trips to the most poor and rural parts of West Virginia in the summer.
In addition to helping the less fortunate, the mission trips keep such happenings as running disappointing times or not getting a perfect score on a pop quiz in perspective.
Knudsen became more involved the last two summers and, in typical fashion, ascended to a leadership role in what was a lot of hard physical labor performing such tasks as digging French drains for houses the group is attempting to make habitable.
“I kind of became a project coordinator,” she said. “The houses were the worst in the neighborhood, and even the neighborhood wasn’t that great.”
Because there is no indoor plumbing, they get one bathroom break per day at a local McDonald’s.
“I can’t remember the last time I was even inside a McDonald’s,” she said, adding that there were “stray dogs walking around everywhere.”
Although the two houses the group worked on were not inhabited, Knudsen said she and the group “connected with some of the neighbors” as best as they could.
“It was a crazy experience,” she said. “It’s crazy to think that they live like that. I feel we are pretty fortunate to live in the Hatboro-Horsham School District.”
Clearing a Hurdle
Her summertime mission trips to West Virginia or the story of how she found her athletic passion would have made for ideal subject matter when it came to her college essays, but Knudsen instead chose to write about the adversity she had to overcome to get herself running at a high level again.
It began with what Knudsen calls a “tough end of my sophomore cross-country season, running 2-3 minutes behind my PR and we figured I was just tired from the long season.”
When the winter indoor season rolled around, her times were still well below expected, but it was chalked up to a “stomach bug” or something else easily explained, like a common cold.
“We figured it was because of my illnesses,” said Knudsen, who said that her times at the start of the spring season were two minutes off pace.
“I struggled the first two races of the spring season, running around 14:00 when I should be closer to 12:00,” said Knudsen. “After my second race, I broke into tears in front of Coach Baker because I was so frustrated with how I felt.”
Then one day in health class, students were testing their resting pulses and Knudsen recalls hers at 90 beats per minute (bpm).
She went home and quizzed her mother, a family physician who did her residency at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, and received a startling answer.
“As a runner, my mom said it should be around 60-70 bpm,” said Knudsen. “I went to the doctor and my height and weight was measured. They drew blood and I was tested for celiac disease.”
In addition to losing 15 pounds from an already narrow frame, the tests revealed that Knudsen was not only anemic, but was “severely anemic.”
A distance runner, she now found herself with a major hurdle to clear.
“I took iron pills twice a day for the first 4-6 months and continue to take them once a day every day,” she said. “The nutritionist told me in order to gain the weight back I needed to eat 3000 calories on an easy day and upwards of 5000 calories on a more strenuous day. I have since gained the weight back and my hemoglobin is within the normal limits and my ferritin is within the limits as well and still slowly rising.”
And her times began lowering. Even in that spring season, she ran a few personal bests.
“I did PR (achieve a personal record), it was an amazing feeling,” said Knudsen, who worked her way toward running the two-mile by the end of her junior year and also had a PR.”
Still, Knudsen was left so jolted by the experience that it was what came naturally for the college essays.
“Anemia impacted me so much, and is such a widespread thing in the world. I have now written multiple college essays on the topic and done several projects in high school using it as a topic,” said Knudsen, who still a bit astonished, in retrospect, that the anemia was not discovered sooner.
“It was a good six months before we noticed it. I didn’t have great races toward the end of the (cross country) season, but I thought, ‘I’ll be fine in the winter.’ But, again, I was running slower times.
“It was just a really tough season. I felt I could go faster, but my legs just wouldn’t go. I kept thinking, ‘What the heck is wrong with me?’ It was emotionally draining. I was always tired. Now, I think, ‘Why did I not think of that?’”
Added Baker, who had dealt with a bout of anemia as a collegiate athlete: “It was hard to see, as a coach, knowing how hard she had been training.”
Dream Comes True
With anemia in the rear-view mirror, Knudsen came back in the fall of her junior year stronger than ever for cross country and missed the cut for states by four spots.
“She started training for cross country that summer,” said Baker. “Her junior year, she just had a phenomenal year. She took that confidence into the senior year.”
But with that confidence came high standards that Knudsen – who was battling to get under the magical 20-minute mark - was setting for herself.
“I thought, ‘What the heck? I have to get under 20 minutes,’” said Knudsen, who finally did so in a meet at Lehigh, running a 19:20, and “from there I just took off and stayed consistent.”
But that run of consistency ended at her league meet.
“It was an extremely warm day in October,” she said. “No one expected it, and no one was adequately hydrated. I had a real off day, and it was a not good day for me. I ended up missing all-league by one spot. That brought me down. Mentally, it was really upsetting. I ended up crying at leagues.”
Knudsen, a vocal team leader, wanted to go off and wind down by herself, but her coach told her stay with the team and offered words of encouragement.
“Baker said it is better to have a bad race at leagues,” said Knudsen.
That meant it all came down to districts, back on the Lehigh course where she excelled earlier in the year.
“Leading up to Districts, I put myself under a lot of pressure,” said Knudsen.
A top-notch student with an astounding 6.11 weighted GPA, Knudsen even put her schoolwork on the backburner in preparation. She stayed hydrated and went to bed by 8:30 each night.
And when the time came, plenty of trepidation remained.
“When I stepped to the line, I thought, ‘I don’t want to be here,” said Knudsen, who quickly found her legs and was running a good time at the one-mile mark.
She then made the strategic move to seek out, and run with, a pack of state-caliber runners.
“I found a girl from Pennridge who consistently runs under 19 minutes, and I passed her,” said Knudsen. “I saw Baker, and by now, I’m booking to the finish line.”
Knudsen made states by four spots, the same number she missed the cut by a year earlier, and hit a PR of 19:10.
“I found my parents, and I teared up,” she said, adding that running at states was just gravy.
For Baker, the achievement was just as surreal to “see where she came from.”
“She improved every single year,” the Hatters’ coach said. “She missed states by just a few places her junior year. She got through the challenge. It was just awesome. It was so good to see. As a coach, you want the best for the athletes who really deserve it. It might have been the coolest moment I have had as a coach.”
“I just wanted to run at states,” Knudsen said. “I knew Hershey was a challenging race with a lot of hills. I was just excited to have the experience. I ended up finishing exactly 100th out of 200, with a time of 20:26.”
Meanwhile, in her final scholastic season this spring, Knudsen is making noise in the 3200. She took a big step toward that goal Thursday by running a school-record 11:26.02.
“She hopes to break 11:20 and look to states,” said Baker.
Back to the Future
With her best races having been run at Lehigh, it would only stand to reason that Knudsen would be a natural fit.
In reality, it was one of four schools she seriously considered.
She talked to coaches at Delaware, Bucknell and Lafayette. And although she was drawn to the academic landscapes, she received tepid responses from the track coaches at Delaware and Bucknell, who were steadfast about running certain times.
Lafayette remained the leading candidate but, ultimately, Lehigh became the choice.
“Lafayette was amazing,” she said. “It gave me an opportunity to study engineering and run on a collegiate team. The girls were awesome, and the coach was awesome.
“I e-mailed Lehigh and no one answered for a while, so I had kind of written it off my list. Then, I was offered a visit after states.”
And a lot of the same feelings she had when Baker and some older H-H runners visited Keith Valley Middle School came back to the surface.
“It seemed like a really big family, and I was looking for a track family, too,” said Knudsen, explaining that the H-H track team, unlike the cross-country team, is more fractured into groups based on events.
When the calendar flipped to 2017, her mind was made up.
“In January, I officially committed,” said Knudsen, who hopes to turn her chemical engineering degree into working for a company such as Gore-Tex because it’s “intriguing.”
Knudsen said that before taking AP calculus and chemistry as a junior, she may have found herself at a bigger college as a liberal arts major.
“Those AP classes were difficult,” she said, adding that she takes all honors classes, other than AP, and that it has “been a struggle” to be a year-round athlete and stellar student.
“It meant staying up late, making sure I got those grades,” she said. “My junior year is really when my time management skills were really honed down.”
Looking Back, Looking Ahead
But it was has not been all work and no play for Knudsen, who has done her best to be involved in the school community.
She is in the Ski Club, National Honor Society and is particularly proud of her role in the Link Crew, and can often be found in a room at H-H known as Link Crew Land.
“It is a program called Link Crew in which two upperclassmen are assigned a group of freshmen and guide them throughout their freshman year at the high school to ease their transition,” she said. “I participated in it the past two years and have become more involved this year.
“I am enrolled in the class that goes along with it and am very close with the two teachers that run the program.”
For Knudsen, her whole evolution into leadership roles – she was a captain for the cross-country team – was part of giving back.
“I want to thank all of my teammates for motivating me and giving me pep talks,” said the great giver of one-on-one pep talks, before adding that “everybody needs one once in a while.”
Along the way, she has development invaluable relationships with teachers.
“I have gotten to know them on a more personal level than just teacher and student,” she said. “That has really made an impact.
“People always say to get to know your professors in college, so having that experience is good for me as I transition to college because I know I can form relationships with an adult.”
In addition to her supportive family, Knudsen also wanted to give a shout out to all her training partners over the years. The list includes current La Salle runner Alyssa Quinn, Natalie Hurst, current close friend and teammate Miranda Royds, Nicole Neborg and cross-country co-captain and “very good friend” Miranda Cahill.
And then there is Baker, the coach she first met back at Keith Valley Middle School.
“She has been a tremendous coach,” said Knudsen. “She always believed in me and she just cares about all of us so much. I don’t think people fully realize how much she does for all of us.”
For Baker, having to say goodbye and push reset with new wide-eyed incoming freshman, is a difficult part of the job that the fifth-year coach will learn to accept.
In the meantime, she has Knudsen to thank for adding the desired spirit to the squad the last four years.
“Man, there is a lot to talk about when it comes to Hannah,” she said. “From the get-go, you could tell she was both an amazing athlete and an amazing person. Hannah, by far, was our strongest leader. She is a great role model, who steps up to the plate. She is big reason why we turned it around.
“I’ve been so grateful to coach someone like Hannah, and I’m excited for her future. She has so much potential.”
