University of Arizona's Amy Skieresz crosses the finish line in the NCAA championship of the women's cross country race in 1996 in Tucson,. She finished first in the 3.16-mile race with a time of 17 minutes, 4 seconds.
Nov. 18, 1996: Amy Skieresz earns the first of seven NCAA championships
The stewards operating the 1996 NCAA Women’s Cross Country Championships handed each of the 183 runners a bib with a letter and a number, indicating their starting position.
Amy Skieresz was given A-1.
Whatever she wore during her UA career, A-1 was most appropriate.
At the ’96 championships, held at Dell Urich Golf Course, Skieresz was in such command that she said “I didn’t know where anybody else was.”
She won by more than 25 seconds, the first of her seven NCAA championships.
“You never know what will happen down the line, with injuries or things like that,” said UA coach Dave Murray, “but this could be the first of many great races for Amy.”
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Two years later, at the Rim Rock Farm near Lawrence, Kansas, Skieresz was the favorite for the last time in her UA career. By then she had won seven NCAA championships, including two each at 5,000 and 10,000 meters in outdoor track and field, and two NCAA 5,000 indoor titles.
Few, if any, suspected that the ’98 NCAA finals on an over-the-river-and-through-the-woods type of course in Kansas would be Skieresz’s last race for the Wildcats.
Three days before the Wildcats flew to Kansas, I interviewed Skieresz near Reid Park as the Wildcats gathered for a final workout. She was withdrawn and distracted. Murray told me he could not comment.
Is she injured?
Murray grimaced but said nothing.
Over the weekend, I flew to Kansas City, drove an hour or two to Rim Rock Farm and saw Murray in the lobby of a Lawrence hotel.
He again declined comment on the nation’s top female amateur distance runner.
The next morning, a chilly and overcast Monday in the woods, Skieresz ran without an expression during warmups. That was her style; in a streak of 20 consecutive victories — on the track and in cross country — leading to the 1998 NCAA cross country finals, Skieresz was inscrutable, a cold-blooded runner whose style was to grab the lead and keep it.
By then she had won two Honda Awards, the track and cross country equivalent of the Heisman Trophy. She had twice been the Pac-10 track and field Athlete of the Year.
“She has zero ego,” said Murray. “She doesn’t like a lot of attention. She’s a consummate teammate.”
But there was something troubling Skieresz in Kansas, the final race of her college career. She wasn’t thinking about overhauling Suzy Hamilton, the career NCAA leader with nine distance titles. She was thinking about a pain in her leg.
Five days earlier, worried about discomfort in her upper right thigh — an injury that she worried might be cancer-related — Skieresz wasn’t at 100 percent. Doctors weren’t sure about the extent of her injury.
Yet in the final half-mile of the ’98 championships, Skieresz and Michigan’s Katie McGregor were far ahead of the pack. The difference was that Skieresz ran with a noticeable limp.
McGregor won in 16 minutes 47 seconds. Skieresz was six seconds behind.
She embraced her father, Bill Skieresz, himself an avid cyclist and runner who has lived in Tucson for almost 20 years. It was an emotional scene.
It was the last time Skieresz ran for the Wildcats.
A few weeks later she was told the injury was a benign tumor that would dissolve over time. She decided to skip the 1999 track and field season and begin the process of making America’s 2000 Olympic team.
Skieresz joined the Nike Project and trained in Australia and at Stanford, ran a few races, but one afternoon in 2000, a month before the U.S. Olympic Trials, Murray phoned to tell me his franchise athlete was retiring from running. She was 23.
“It’s time for me to find a job and get on with life,” she told me that night. “Running isn’t the lifestyle I want to lead. But to be an Olympic runner you’ve got to be 100 percent committed and I am not. I’ve been running since I was 8. Enough is enough.”
Last fall, Amy was named the Pac-12’s Women’s Cross Country Runner of the Century.
Where are they now? Skieresz joined Murray’s staff as an assistant coach for three seasons. After returning to her home in Westlake, California, to help coach a high school team, Skieresz left organized track. She married former Arkansas All-America runner Ryan Wilson. The two have three children and live in Palm Desert, California.
How she did it: During her UA career, and for a few years after, you could often see Skieresz running near Reid Park or on the Rillito bike path, or through the Sam Hughes neighborhood. After she had her first child, she would do the same, pushing a stroller.
Photo: University of Arizona's Amy Skieresz crosses the finish line in the NCAA championship of the women's cross country race in 1996 in Tucson, Ariz. She finished first in the 3.16-mile race with a time of 17 minutes 4 seconds. Photo by Linda Seeger Salazar / Arizona Daily Star
