WHEN THE TEAM landed at the Albuquerque International Sunport on Tuesday, March 10, Stanford senior Ella Donaghu felt a sense of relief.
We're safe, she thought. We made it.
With the rapid spread of COVID-19, life was beginning to change. Restrictions, bans, postponements, and cancelations were on the table everywhere. Stanford halted in-person classes four days earlier.
But amidst the uncertainty and confusion, something was real. The Cardinal was at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships. They can't cancel the meet now, she thought.
There was reassurance in that. Even if spectators were banned – a declaration made the following day – the athletes were there and poised to compete. Timing would save it.
Donaghu would anchor the Cardinal women's distance medley relay team on Friday in an anticipated showdown against BYU for the title. She also was the No. 4 seed for Saturday's 3,000 meters.
On Thursday morning, Donaghu and her relay teammates practiced baton passes as scheduled, but outside the cocoon of the Albuquerque Convention Center's banked track, protocol changed by the minute.
Soon, Donaghu was on the phone with teammates back at Stanford. One told her of a news flash that the meet was canceled and the entire outdoor season was eliminated. Fifteen minutes later, the nine Cardinal NCAA competitors were called to a meeting in the hotel lobby.
The season was over.
"I never once thought that we weren't going to run," Donaghu said. "Maybe that was my deepest fear that I wasn't really confronting."
A day earlier, the NBA suspended its season and the dominoes started to fall. Track wasn't the only Stanford team to come so close to an authentic end to its season. The women's swimming and diving team was seven days from its NCAA Championships, fencing was eight days away, and men's swimming and diving two weeks away. In nine days, Stanford would host the first round of the NCAA women's basketball tournament. All of it … gone.
But nothing was quite like being left at the altar, so to speak, a single day short of a possible NCAA championship.
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Stanford's DMR team (from left): Jessica Lawson, Julia Heymach, Ashlan Best, Ella Donaghu.Photo by Chuck Aragon.
"THE DMR WAS really the heartbreak for all of us," Donaghu said. "To be in a position to win the national title, we were all excited and honored to be a part of that. The DMR represents how far our program has come this past year, beginning with a coaching change that we didn't see coming. It was symbolic of the adversity that we overcame and, despite it all, we came out better than we'd ever been."
To Stanford indoor track, the DMR is the king of all races. Stanford qualified for NCAA's in the men's DMR the past 11 years and has won four NCAA titles.
The saga of the Cardinal women's DMR is shaded with a 'what if?' tinge. It failed to qualify last year, but from 2014-18, Stanford was second in the NCAA four times and third once. Three times, Stanford led on the final lap. The total margin between Stanford and the winners in those five races was 6.00 seconds. In 2017, the Cardinal fell 0.02 short. In 2018, it was 0.03.
This Stanford lineup – Jessica Lawson, Ashlan Best, Julia Heymach, and Donaghu – was capable and motivated to change recent history. All four were running out of their minds.
"It's one thing to have all that canceled, but at the end of the day, I love this team and this program because of the people," Donaghu said. "I'm so grateful I get to train and live with my best friends. Having that taken from you, and having it be completely out of your control was … just really sad."
This race was going to be one of redemption for Donaghu. Her first two collegiate track seasons were almost completely lost to injury. Donaghu rallied last spring to place sixth in the NCAA 1,500 meters and continued her trajectory by winning the NCAA West Regional in cross country this fall.
Her indoor season was shaping up to be even better. In her season debut, Donaghu ran the second-fastest indoor 3,000 in school history. A month later, she ran three seconds faster, in 8:54.72.
In five indoor races this season, including a DMR, Donaghu was the top collegian in four of them. Her mile victory at Arkansas' Razorback Invitational was a school record (4:33.71) for a regulation-sized (200-meter) indoor track. She won the same event at the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Championships.
"Running the 3K the next day would definitely have been fun and I was excited to see how that would shake out, but the one thing we were looking forward to the most was the DMR," Donaghu said.
There was a brief thought … maybe it would work … wouldn't it be cool … to call the BYU DMR team, find their way into the Albuquerque Convention Center and have a secret match race for bragging rights.
Should we do it?, Donaghu wondered. Could we call them and just say, "Let's go race?"
It remained a wild conversation among teammates -- maybe among both teams. The forbidden race never happened.
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Ella Donaghu wins the 2019 NCAA West Region cross country title. Photo by Chuck Aragon.
THERE WERE TIMES Donaghu endured a pain so great from a sacral stress fracture that even laying still could not relieve it. Not even sleep offered respite. There were times when Donaghu -- the seventh-fastest 1,500 runner in history -- questioned whether she was cut out for college running.
"That's a super frustrating place to be where in your heart you want it so badly, but your body just can't keep up," she said.
Baby steps. Donaghu slowly found her footing again. As the injury-free days mounted, that's when she made progress.
"For the most part, it's just been consistency," Donaghu said. "For the first couple of years, I never really had long periods of time where I could string together consistent training. At a high level, consistency is everything."
Consistency builds resistance to injury. It creates a better self-understanding of strengths and weaknesses. But when Donaghu finally regained her health and was on her way to truly excelling, she suffered another disappointment with the mid-summer departure of coach Chris Miltenberg.
Donaghu feared the consistency upon which her comeback was built would collapse. She now must adapt to new training.
"Our attitude was: This isn't really an ideal situation for anyone," she said. "Who knows what the new situation is going to be like. But we're a team, we're in this together, and we're going to make the most out of it.
"More than anything, the change forced us to grow together. It allowed us to show up to training and races with this reinvigorated attitude of, We're Stanford and we're going to crush it."
Donaghu and her teammates thrived under J.J. Clark, the first-year Franklin P. Johnson Director of Track and Field. Fiona O'Keeffe, Donaghu, and Lawson finished 1-2-3 at the Pac-12 Cross Country Championships, helping Stanford to its first women's conference title in nine years. Donaghu took eighth at the NCAA Cross Country Championships to pace Stanford to third, its highest team finish in seven years.
Of the DMR crew, Best (400), Heymach (800, mile), Lawson (mile, 3,000), and Donaghu (mile, 3,000) each ran faster than ever indoors, even faster than equivalent races outdoors, when the fastest times typically come.
"I've really enjoyed the new training," Donaghu said. "Coach Clark has a modern approach -- he really emphasizes being a good athlete, not just being a good runner. Being strong, agile, powerful and quick. It allows you to become a more dynamic runner and athlete."
Training sessions are hard, they're never alike and they tend to focus on race-specific goals. For example:
"We started off a workout with a 600, where we went through the first 400 in 60 seconds," Donaghu said. "We held on for a 1:31. That's like a race effort. And then we followed with a 1,000, 600, and 400. If that workout doesn't give you confidence that you can literally go out crazy fast and still finish hard, then I don't know what will."
Donaghu expects every day to be tough, but also appreciates the loose and relaxed vibe that Clark has developed among the team, in training and at meets.
"It's almost like you're just hanging out with your friends," Donaghu said. "But at the same time, you know you're going to be able to deliver and run a really good workout. We've learned that being relaxed allows you to run really well in workouts and that transfers over to races.
"I feel like I've struggled in the past of being way too serious before races. Coach Clark has taught us to just chill out. He always says, 'You know, you're going to go out and you're going to race and it's going to be what it's going to be. We'll talk about it at the end and then we'll move on.' It doesn't feel like there's this huge weight that this needs to be amazing and if it's not amazing, you're going to be a failure.
"As a coach, learning how to teach your athletes to relax is a huge thing."
Donaghu wins the mile at the Razorback Invitational. Photo by Chuck Aragon.
In her indoor season debut, in a 3,000 at the UW Preview on Jan. 18, Donaghu faced a field that included several professionals. She felt intimidated by the competition, and knew the pace would be fast.
"Do you think I'm really ready?" she asked Clark.
"Without a doubt," he said.
In recalling that conversation, "That sort of surprised me," Donaghu said. "I don't know if I'm ready to do this, but my coach is telling me I am.
"I never want to feel like I have to get confidence from a coach, but there are times when I'm doubting myself a bit and he can notice that. He'll pull me aside and be like, 'What are you afraid of? Go for it. You're as good as anyone out there.' And he means it. That puts your mind at ease before races. I'm as good as anyone, so why not go for the win?"
Donaghu finished second in that race by only 0.06 and was the top collegian. She ran the fastest 3,000 by a Stanford runner indoors in 37 years.
Come spring, Stanford might have qualified five – Donaghu, Heymach, Lawson, Christina Aragon, and Jordan Oakes – for the NCAA outdoor 1,500. No school has ever done so in that event. They had the credentials: Donaghu, Lawson, and Aragon are past NCAA 1,500 finalists, Heymach reached this year's NCAA indoor mile and Oakes missed by one spot.
"It's not just that we were thinking that, it's that it actually could happen," Donaghu said. "That was legitimate. That's what I have to remind myself every day, how far this team has come. We've been working toward being at a point like this for so long and there were times when it felt more like a dream than actually being possible."
Instead, those goals are paused until 2021.
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Donaghu and Lawson upon qualifying for the 2019 NCAA Outdoor Championships. Photo by Spencer Allen/SportsImageWire.com.
WHERE DOES DONAGHU go from here? How do you reach the precipice and build on it with shelter-in-place, no training partner, no races on the horizon, and not even a track to train on?
"Coming off indoor, I had a little bit of a break, so now I'm just slowly coming back," she said. "But I really want to keep training for track like I would if I were at school. Hopefully, an opportunity does come up to race. Yes, you can do everything alone. Is it fun? No. But I can work out alone."
Donaghu is working toward her degree in human biology, with a concentration of exercise science, and a minor in psychology. She keeps in touch with her teammates, especially her fellow runners who are strung across the country. She can't wait to join them again.
"Think about how good we're going to be next year," she said. "All this is just adding more fuel to everyone's fire. I'm already getting excited for cross country."
For the forseeable future, Ella remains in Portland, Oregon, with her father Michael and mother Laurie – All-America distance runners at Dartmouth – and sister Ruby, a high school senior.
"It was a dream of a season," Donaghu said. "Those were moments I will never forget. I always knew that I had a lot more in the tank. I always knew in the back of my mind and in my heart, that I could be really good."
Now, she knows it.
She was one day from seizing college track's ultimate prize, an NCAA championship. Now, in the worst of circumstances, Donaghu plots a new path to the same destination. To finally take what could have been hers.
Ella Donaghu digs to the finish at the 2019 Wisconsin Invitational. Photo by Aaron Shepley.