Cross Country, Track
Favorite athlete: Kim Gallagher (Upper Dublin High School Class of 1982 and a two-time Olympian)
Favorite team: I do not have a favorite team. I love all sports!
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: The funniest thing that happened while running in high school was when the Strath Haven boys’ cross country team made shirts that said, ‘I love Sara Sargent’ and sold them at cross country my freshman sophomore year.
Music on iPod: Anything from Pop to Christian Rock. On the way to meets, I love to listen to Christian rock because it relaxes me and motivates me to achieve my goals.
Future plans: Compete nationally in collegiate running
Words to live by: ‘I am going to work so that it’s a pure guts race at the end, and if it is, I am the only one who can win it.’ Steve Prefontaine
One goal before turning 30: Run a marathon!
One thing people don’t know about me: I am able to easily find four-leaf clovers.
Sara Sargent heard the talk. She saw the hateful blog posts. She read the nasty words.
“One-hit wonder.” “Flash in the pan.” “Not the real deal.”
The distance runner was in her sophomore year at Pennsbury High School, where, as a freshman, she had won the Suburban One League championship, the district championship and the state championship. In fact, she had won every single race she ran. Yet she was having difficulty during her 10th-grade cross-country season.
Difficulty, in this case, meaning she wasn’t winning all the time.
“Some people thought I was just another freshman who had a big year and burned out,” said Sargent, an honors student, who is now a senior.
Many of the negative and jealous online posts, which littered a handful of running websites and other social-media outlets, were written by overzealous, out-of-control adults.
“She really got lambasted,” Pennsbury coach Don Little said. “People were very critical of her. It was a small number of people, but a vocal number. It was unbelievable. And she was a 14-, 15-year-old kid.”
What most folks didn’t know was that Sargent was diagnosed with Mononucleosis in the middle of her sophomore cross country season. She had been trying to fight through the ailment.
“It was hard to get the will to win back,” Sargent said. “I took some time off to refocus.
“After my freshman year, my parents sat me down and told me that people are going to be mean,” she said. “I tried to use it to my advantage and use it as motivation to achieve even more than I already did. It was harder in the beginning, but I don’t think of the negatives. I leave it behind and move on.”
In the winter of her sophomore year, free from Mono but with her body still weakened, Sargent won the indoor 3,000-meter state title and set a state record with a 9:49 time.
No sophomore slump. No falloff as a junior or senior. None of that. Hers has been high-school career of sustained excellence, which often isn’t the norm even among the best distance runners.
In addition to capturing state gold in the indoor 3,000, she has won the state title in the outdoor 3,200. Actually, she has won at least one individual state championship in each of her four years at Pennsbury, and she has finished in the top ten at the state cross-country meet four times.
All this while leading the Falcons to three consecutive state team championships.
“When I took over the program eight years ago, we tried to expand it and grow, and we were making progress,” Little said. “But the year Sara came in, she just took it to a whole other level and accelerated the whole process.
“In a socially positive, peer way, she had an influence on the other girls by showing them what was possible,” he said. “You can count up all her medals, but her intangibles were really important. The girls really looked at her doing her job, and it made them want to succeed and it helped them approach the sport in a serious way.
“I think what Sara went though as a sophomore, over time it became a defining moment for her, the way she handled it and overcame it,” Little added. “One word: resilient. That’s how I’d describe her. She’s had to battle the whole way and deal with all of the pressure and criticism. Now she knows not to take it personally.”
Always on the go, Sargent stays busy with honors classes and a multitude of school activities. She’s a member of the National Honor Society and is very involved in charity work through her Yardley-based church, St. Ignatius, where she also helps her dad coach track and cross country.
Sargent plans to run in college. Among the schools she’s considering are Villanova, Georgetown, University of Virginia and University of Pennsylvania.
“I don’t have to commit until February, but I want to verbally commit before then so I don’t have to think about it and I can focus on my classes and running,” she said.
Sargent has been running since third or fourth grade. Her parents took her to a Fourth of July Fun Run at Washington’s Crossing, and they noticed something special.
“I was just wearing slip-on Skechers, and most of the people in the race were adults,” she said. “I fell and people were running over me, and then I got up and outran everybody. My parents said, ‘This might be something you’re good at.’
“They didn’t push me into it, I’ve done a lot of other sports — gymnastics, soccer, horseback riding — but they’ve always been supportive.”
Speaking of running, Pennsbury’s season isn’t quite over yet. For the first time in school history, the Falcons are in the Nike Cross Country Regionals. This Saturday they’re competing in upstate New York, where they’re the No. 1 seed. If they finish in the top two, they’ll go to nationals in Portland, Ore., the following weekend.
“We’re very excited,” said Sargent who overcame a severe ankle injury this fall and even had to miss two weeks of the season during Pennsbury’s run to an oh-by-the-way state three-peat.
“When we started our summer training, we geared everything toward nationals rather than states,” Sargent said. “Our home opener wasn’t until mid-September. We pushed everything back so we can peak at the right time.”
These days, Sargent is blazing full-speed ahead, but she’s thankful for the adversity she faced early in her high-school career.
“I would never go back and change anything,” she said. “I feel like I’m a stronger person. … It’s amazing to think about what I did as a freshman and going through all of that. Everything else is just icing on the cake. I couldn’t ask for anything else.”
