Interview with Anita Campbell

By Shannon Martin

Anita Campbell has reason to be excited about the NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships, which take place in Terre Haute, Indiana, next Monday. This time she will be competing with her entire team, which qualified for the first time since she’s been a student at the University of Washington. Nineteen-year-old Campbell is currently a junior, and this will be her third year competing at the NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships. For the past two years she’s run without her teammates and finished 89th (2006) and 94th (2005), but with her team behind her Campbell hopes to place in the top-30 next week.

Campbell hails from Vancouver, British Columbia, and has extensive experience in cross country and track. In high school, she qualified for the 2005 IAAF World Junior Cross Country Championships in St. Etienne, France, where she placed 84th. She consistently placed in the top-10 in British Columbia track events ranging from the 1500 meters to the 3000 meters and in cross country races. In 2004, she won the British Columbia prep. cross country title.

Campbell, who majors in French and Community and Environmental Planning, has continued to make a name for herself in track and cross country in the prestigious PAC-10 conference. In 2006, she earned first-team All-West Region and second-team All-PAC-10 honors. She competed in the 2006 IAAF World Junior Cross Country Championships, in Fukuoka, Japan, where she finished in 56th place. This past spring, Campbell achieved a 16:00:03 PR in the 5000 meters at the Stanford Invitational.

Fast-women.com: Let’s start by talking about the PAC-10 meet where you had an incredible race, finishing in sixth place.

Anita Campbell: We went into the PAC-10 meet just after pre-nationals, where we had a pretty good performance as a team, so we were feeling really good going into the meet. I finished sixth, like you said, in a sprint finish with Nicole Blood and Jenna Kingma. I tend to finish right around them in most meets, so it was nice to have them there at the end to push it to the finish line. It was a great team performance overall; we tied ASU for third place behind Stanford and Oregon. This race gave us the confidence boost that we needed; Katie Follett was right behind me, Mel [Marie] Lawrence and Amanda Miller came in together, and Trisha Rasmussen, our fifth girl, really moved up in the pack, so this race really jump-started our season.

FW: You’re the top finisher on your team—as a team leader, how do you assure that your teammates compete to the best of their ability?

AC: That’s a good question. I think for any of us on the team to be successful, we need to take care of one another. We’ve been doing that this year, which is an important part of the team environment. We’ve had some older girls on the team really step it up this year, showing the younger girls what it takes to be successful. Along with me, two seniors, Trisha and Amanda, have really helped the younger girls out. I make sure that everyone is working hard in workouts and that they’re taking care of themselves outside of practice. I also make sure that everyone stays focused and keeps enjoying their running without getting frustrated if things don’t go the way they wished. It’s important to move on and make sure that you learn lessons from every race. I haven’t had a perfect race yet—no one has. The ones who learn from their mistakes are the same ones who are going to go out and do better with every race. Everyone has personal needs too, so I like to make sure that everyone is doing what they need to do personally and they’ve been doing a pretty good job with that on their own.

FW: How does it feel to go to nationals this year with your team, as opposed to the past two years, when you’ve gone as an individual?

AC: I’m really excited! I’ve gone the past two years. Both years, I’d go into regionals really nervous, trying to get that individual spot, not knowing if the team would be able to go. This year, we were pretty much secured a spot, so it was a lot more relaxing for me to race; I was able to enjoy it a little bit more. It’ll be a nice change this year. I’ve always had to stand in the “individual” box with the other girls who didn’t have a team, and this year my team will have a box. It’ll be nice to have a bunch of people I know to be with before and after the race.

Going with a team is a lot more important than I thought it was. The first two years, I went there thinking that I could perform well on my own, only to find out that I was a lot less experienced than I thought I was. I learned a lot of lessons from those two experiences and my finishes weren’t nearly as good as I wanted them to be. It’ll be nice to combine the team support and the lessons I’ve learned, to use them on Monday, and it’ll also be nice to share these lessons with the team.

FW: What are some of the key lessons you learned at nationals the past two years?

AC: The main thing for me is to go out at a fast pace at the beginning. When you’re in the wrong crowd from the start, it’s kind of o ver for you in that race. It’s best to establish your position at the beginning to make sure you’re running with the girls you want to run with because not much changes after the first thousand [meters]. It’s the last race of the season for everyone and everyone is really pushing it, so it’s important to remember those things.

FW: Do you think the fact that you’re in the toughest conference in the country helps you when it comes time to compete at nationals?

AC: I think it helps a lot actually. I feel that we need to think about that and use that to our advantage when we go to nationals. The top girls are basically the girls we always run against, so we’re used to it, and we don’t think much of it. In our conference, we have the first [Stanford], third [Oregon], and sixth [ASU] ranked teams in the country. We need to look at our conference from the point of view that we have some of the best-ranked teams out there. We’re also are one of the best ranked teams and that’s the way other teams are looking at us.

It’s important that all of my teammates give themselves credit and realize that we belong at nationals. This is the mentality that we need to have because it can help us internalize what we have over the other girls—we run against competitive teams all the time and we are just as good as they are.

FW: Do you have any specific individual or team goals for nationals?

AC: I would like to have All-American status, finishing in the top 30. I feel like that’s definitely a realistic goal. Anything better than that is great as well. For the team, I feel like we have three or four girls who could be running right with me and who could be All-American as well. Lauren Saylor is only a freshman, but she’s been running great, and she can do anything that she puts her mind to right now; she just has to stay focused. Amanda Miller, a junior, has been improving every single race, so she could do really well on Monday; she’s very strong. Trisha is a senior, and she’s running her last cross country race, so I’m sure she’s going to give it all she has. I think, as a team, we’re ranked eighth right now. At PAC-10 we tied with ASU and were only a few points behind Oregon; that shows you how close we can be and anything can happen at nationals. We’re looking at nationals as being very wide open. A top-10 performance has been our goal since the very beginning of the season at our training camp. We said we wanted top-10 [ranking]; I now feel that we can be at the top end of that. We’ll see; it depends who wants it that day, but we’re in a good spot right now.

FW: Now that we know what your aspirations are for nationals, let’s rewind a bit. I’m curious as to how the transition was for you from high school to college. You competed in cross country and track as a high school student in Canada and then went to Washington State, where now you are competing against the best girls in the country.

AC: The competition is one of the main reasons why I came down here. Being from Canada, you know that a lot of the good competition is in the United States. I raced a few times in some bigger track and cross country races down here [before college], so I’ve been in the competitive atmosphere before. I’ve also raced at worlds a couple of times and have seen many of the girls in previous years that I compete against now. I was just really looking forward to finally being a part of that and constantly racing against those girls. It’s great competition, and it keeps running fun.

I love being in the PAC-10. Like you said, it’s really competitive. It makes you appreciate any success that you have. It makes placing well that much more special and you have to work harder for you success. I like that a lot. I could’ve stayed in Canada, but it was my personal choice to move down here.

FW: And you’re still somewhat close to home, right?

AC: Yes, home is only about two and a half hours away, so my family still gets to come and watch me race.They usually drive about seven and a half hoursto see me race though because most of my races are in Eugene.

FW: Now that cross country season is coming to a close, are you looking forward to indoor and outdoor track?

AC: I’m really excited! Track has been exciting the past couple of years for me and we have an awesome indoor facility, the Dempsey Indoor Arena. I was never a huge fan of indoor track, but our facility is a great place to run. We look forward to the workouts we have in there—it’s a really fast track. We get some very competitive teams who come out and compete. And we have a lot of home meets, which is nice.

In April, we start our big outdoor races. Last year we went to Stanford. This year we might go to Mt. SAC [Mt. San Antonio College]. Those are always fun races; you get people from the east coast and all over, so you get to see some different faces.

What I like about track is that you get to focus on your specialty more than in cross country. You get to focus more on time-specific goals; It’s a nice change. Cross country is exciting in its own right, but you always look forward to the switch when you have to run year-round.

FW: Do you see yourself continuing to run after college?

AC: Yeah; that’s something that I’ve always thought about and have considered since I started running. I definitely want to make sure that it will be worth my while so I’m going to put in as much effort as I can for the next couple of years. If it looks like I’ll have a good future with running, I’ll definitely keep doing it because I love competing!

Interview conducted on November 14, 2007, and posted on November 17, 2007.