A WOMAN WITH OPTIONS, TUOHY IS CHOOSING CAREFULLY

A WOMAN WITH OPTIONS, TUOHY IS CHOOSING CAREFULLY
By David Monti, @d9monti
(c) 2023 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved, used with permission. 

(04-May) — Katelyn Tuohy’s 2023 indoor season was spectacular by any measure.

The 21-year-old from Rockland County, N.Y., not only won the NCAA Division I titles at 3000m and 5000m but also set collegiate indoor records for the mile (4:24.26), 1500m (4:06.49) and 3000m (8:35.20).  She also won the Atlantic Coast Conference 3000m indoor title in a championships record 8:51.92, and anchored her North Carolina State team’s distance medley relay squad with a blazing 4:23.36, 1600m split.

But when asked to evaluate her performance, Tuohy was circumspect, just like her coach Laurie Henes.

“Yeah, I would say it hasn’t been too bad,” she told Race Results Weekly in a telephone interview yesterday.  “Coach Henes is pretty reserved, I think.  She thought it went pretty well.  She’s not the type to kind of say [it] out loud or brag or anything.  Yeah, I think we both could agree that it was a pretty good season.”

That “pretty good season” followed a sensational cross country campaign last fall, culminating in Tuohy winning the individual NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships, the most competitive team running race in the United States, and Henes’s Wolfpack women taking their second consecutive team title.

“That was a really special day,” said Tuohy who got a special satisfaction seeing her teammates Kelsey Chmiel, Samantha Bush, Nevada Mareno, and Brooke Rauber cross the finish line behind her.  “It was really cool crossing the line and seeing all the girls come in.  We were a little nervous going in because many people had setbacks during the year.  A lot of people didn’t see that from the outside, kind of how people on the team overcame a lot to get where they were and line up for each other.  It was just, like, really cool that it worked out.  We worked hard all season together.  It really was a collective effort.  It was definitely a big deal for me.”

But instead of launching into her 2023 outdoor season in late March as she usually would –Tuohy skipped her school’s big spring meet, the Raleigh Relays– Tuohy and Henes are working off of a longer-term plan that would give the reigning NCAA 5000m champion her best chance to not only defend that title but also compete well at the USATF Outdoor Track & Field Championships in Eugene,…