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Mariah Jordan ’17
Reigning conference champion runs like the wind
S
he can’t tell you where it came
from. All Mariah Jordan ’17
knows is the urge has always been
there – the urge to look at some
green open space and want to fill it at
warp speed, to fly through it with the
wind in her hair and her feet barely
grazing the earth.
She loves to run. Always has.
“I’m adopted, so I have no clue what my
genes are,” says Jordan, a Manchester
University senior who is one of the top
distance runners in NCAA Division III.
“But I was always running around on the
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soccer field when I was younger. I played
the midfield position in soccer for seven
years and ... midfield is a big position to
cover, so (running) just stuck with me all
these years.”
She loved to run. And so maybe it was as
much fate as anything that eventually got
her off the soccer field and into running
for running’s sake.
That happened in sixth grade, when
Jordan, who graduated from Homestead
High School in Fort Wayne, first went out
for cross country. She had no idea what
she was getting into at first, she says. But
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all it took was one time trial for her to fall
irretrievably in love with the sport.
“I loved it,” she says. “Apparently long-
distance running is in my blood. Running
seemed easy for me in middle school. The
amount of distance, it didn’t matter, I just
loved doing it. I loved the sport and I loved
the aspect of being on a team and working
hard together and getting all those goals
together.”
It’s what she still loves about the sport, a
decade later. If running for the pure joy of
movement was instinctual, running as a bond
with others was perhaps just as instinctual. It
revealed a passion for community that is at
least partially why Jordan, who went to a big-
city high school with an enrollment of 2,300,
wound up at a university of 1,600 students in
a town of 6,000 souls.
“I loved the small community aspect of it,”
she says of MU. “I’ve learned that every team
supports every other team. Even just running
on the course every day, people from other
teams are cheering you on and supporting
you, just as our team supports other teams as
they compete in their competitions. Just the
whole atmosphere – everyone knows each
other, everyone knows what’s going on at the
school.”
That she has taken to every aspect of the
Manchester experience, and thrived in it, is
undeniable.
Academically, Jordan, an exercise science
and fitness major, was named an NCAA
Division III Academic All-American last
year. And athletically, she’s the reigning
individual Heartland Collegiate Athletic
Conference cross country champion. Last
year she was the only conference athlete to
qualify for the NCAA Division III national
championship, finishing seventh in the
Great Lakes Regional meet to punch her
ticket.
“We knew she had a lot of the intangibles,”
cross country coach Geoff Lambert says.
“She had a great work ethic, and she was
really committed to the process of being
the best that she could be. We knew if she
came to Manchester and she committed to
four years of working hard and dedicating
herself to running that she could really
excel.
“She’s been a pleasure to coach.”
By Benjamin Smith