St. Edward's Venlos focused on picking up more state hardware

There was a time when St. Edward girls track coach Shawn Collins wondered if he'd ever see Megan Venlos run for the Green Wave.

"She came up to me as a freshman and asked about track but then didn't come out," recalled Collins, who is also a teacher at St. Edward and at that time was an assistant track coach.

"Sophomore year, same thing but after she didn't come out freshman year I didn't take her all that serious. But she came out and I had no clue what an athlete she is. And she's gotten better and better."

Venlos, now a senior, has done so without the benefit of a full team to train with. She will run the 1,600-meter prelims today at the Class 1A state meet in Charleston and then compete in the 3,200 run Saturday after she won both events at least weekend's Rockford Christian sectional, running a 5:40.09 mile and a 12:08.65 in the 2-mile.

This is Venlos' second trip to state this school year. She finished eighth in the 100 freestyle and 10th in the 200 free at the state swimming finals and now has the chance to pull off a rare double-double of medaling as an individual in two sports in the same year.

She will compete to earn St. Edward's first-ever individual medal in girls track. The Green Wave's 800 relay team took eighth place in 1987, the only medal the school has ever won at state in the sport.

The best part of this story? Venlos didn't have to run track to impress anyone. She had already secured a swimming scholarship at the University of Idaho, so taking the spring off to train full-time with her St. Charles Swim Club teammates and prepare for college would have been understandable.

"I've been doing track since middle school and running hasn't ever been hard for me," said Venlos, a Sleepy Hollow resident, earlier this week. "It's something I enjoy. It's a good way to stay in shape for swimming and it's good cross-training."

Venlos is on a team that has only one other girl, but she's trained with the St. Edward boys team all season.

"It's a little hard," she said, "The boys have a good-sized team and I just train with the boys who run distance. They're nice and supportive."

Collins says Venlos is the model athlete.

"She's consistent and she always works hard," he said. "She's always there and she never complains. She's a straight-A student and everyone looks up to her. All the boys cheer for her. Everyone cheers for her. She's just this little tiny girl who intimidates the other girls when she gets out there and starts running. But she's very friendly and a great young lady.

"The fact that she didn't have to do this - she already had her scholarship for swimming - that says a lot about her character. There's just so much to say about her. She works hard in the classroom and she does a lot of stuff outside of track and swimming."

Venlos has been to state track before. She was a part of the St. Edward 3,200 relay team that made it to Charleston in 2008. And Collins figured she was a lock for a state berth last year in the mile and 2-mile, but an ankle injury incurred at the conference meet slowed her at sectionals and she didn't make the cut.

"She made state times all last year and got hurt right before sectionals. That was really a shame," Collins said.

That setback gave Venlos incentive for this year.

"It was my goal this year to make it to state," said Venlos, who is ranked No. 5 in her class academically and carries a GPA of 4.5 on a 4.0 scale. "I'd like to place and make it to the finals in the mile. I'd like to get under 12 minutes in the 2-mile. I'm really excited that I get to go this year. It's my senior year and I think it will be a lot of fun."

When the state track meet is over, Venlos will return to full-time training with her club swim team.

She's been going to practice before school, then running track after school. Then, after graduation, it will be on to preparing for college, where she'll study Animal Science in the hopes of becoming a large animal veterinarian someday.

"I'd like to work with race horses," she says. "I think that would be cool."

This weekend, Venlos hopes to have some racehorse in her when she steps on the track at Eastern Illinois University. If she does, she could very well bring home a medal or two.

And that, too, would be cool.