Centre College’s Annie Rodenfels: Great beginning of her new journey
DANVILLE, Ky. — Annie Rodenfels won her first 5000-meter race after signing a contract with Boston Athletic Association. She finished at 15:10.00 – just under the world championship standard. If she falls within first three places at the next year’s selection race, she will be able to participate in the world championships, representing the United States.
Rodenfels’s coach was so impressed with her performance and wasn’t actually expecting this from her.
“I was expecting 15:20, give or take a couple of seconds,” her coach said. “I wasn’t honestly expecting sub-15:10 and a world championships standard. I knew she was ready to run really well and a big PR, but she surprised everybody.”
Rodenfels always underestimates herself.
“Coach Taylor asked if we were going to rabbit through 4K, and I looked at her and I was like, ‘No, I’m not good enough to run that pace for 4K,’” she recalled. However, it now seems a time when she should recalibrate her expectations.
Rodenfels was a soccer player at the Centre College for years when she started to get serious about running. Rodenfels gave so much of her time and energy to the Centre and had a good preparation for her professional career under her college coach Lisa Owens.
“Centre is not an easy place to go to school and focus on sports at the same time,” Rodenfels said. “Now that I have all day to do my run and stuff, that time management is important. You learn perseverance going to Centre and the (Division III) route not that I had a lot of other options.”
Rodenfels had a great track record with the Colonels. She earned loads of honors and set amazing records. During that time, she managed to secure a place with Greenville Elite Track Club (S.C.) as a head cross country/track and field coach, but it was semi-pro team that did not contribute significantly towards her training, nor did it pay enough to cover the bills.
“I was not making enough money to live off of,” she said. “I was working part-time jobs. I was coaching and doing other things.” Despite that, she managed to qualify two cross country teams to the state championship and one athlete from the track and field team in the 100-meter hurdles.
Lately in Boston, Rodenfels won the USA Track and Field New England women’s cross country title by finishing the 6K course in 20:25.
Rodenfels is an elite runner as she became only the second Centre athlete to win back-to-back national titles and only the second Division III athlete to win consecutive steeplechase national championship titles.
Rodenfels had bad luck during the Olympic trials in steeplechase as she got a back injury combined with a second COVID-19 illness just one month before the trials. She qualified for the trials after achieving her 1500-meter best time (4:13.49) in April 2021. However, she accepted it with patience and stayed strong without losing hope and ran in Eugene on June 20 where she stood 30th of the 33 participants.
Recently, she has been hired as assistant cross country and track and field-distance coach. It seems like a lot more is yet to come in Rodenfels’ life and she definitely has a bright future!
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