Mollie Golicher was a skilled runner and was expected to be a big part of Wharton High School’s cross-country and track teams.
(Photos courtesy of Kyle LoJacono)
After all, her older sister, Kallie, was a standout runner for the school. Kallie earned a letter all four years of high school, was a team captain for both cross-country and track, and won school awards for athletic excellence.
So, even before she stepped onto a single track or course, big things were expected of Mollie.
“Her sister was kind of an all-everything runner, and everybody expects her to be the same thing,” recalled Kyle LoJacono, the Wharton boys’ cross-country and track coach who also spends a lot of time working with the girls’ team.
For Golicher’s freshman and sophomore years, things went according to plan. She was one of the school’s top runners in cross-country and track.
But then there were problems.
Specifically, she had problems with her hips.
As she got older and continued to grow, she was having trouble doing her normal running. Her hips would make clicking sounds, and she felt excruciating pain. And that made it impossible to be the athlete she was expected to be.
“It got really bad, to the point that it hurt to walk around school,” Golicher said. “If I sat down for a while, my hips would hurt getting up.”
With her junior year a wash, Golicher focused on bouncing back her senior year, working hard and preparing to re-establish herself at the top of her sport.
She did what her coaches told her to do. She did everything right. Unfortunately, things went wrong.
As a senior, practicing became a constant exercise in pain. Instead of being able to focus on running, Golicher was just trying to get through the activity in one piece.
“The pain is just to the point where she can’t get through simple runs sometimes without just breaking down crying, because there was so much pain,” LoJacono said.
At that point it would almost make sense to quit.
Golicher could have taken the easy path and moved on to something else.
But if being a top runner wasn’t an option anymore, neither was quitting.
Despite her struggles, Golicher became a team captain in both cross-country and track. And she took the leadership role seriously.
“In senior year when I became a captain, I knew I had to support my team no matter what I was going through, to push the younger runners to their full potential and to push the team in general, and be a leader and role model for the younger runners,” Golicher said.
She also got support from Kallie, now running for the College of Charleston, a Division I school in South Carolina. She encouraged her little sister to look at the big picture, and not give up on the idea of running in college herself one day.
She followed her sister’s advice. She encouraged and supported the top runners — most of whom were freshmen and sophomores.
Her attitude and knowledge wasn’t just helpful to the team.
According to LoJacono, it was instrumental to their success.
“We could not have won districts in both cross-country and track without Mollie. She was like having another coach out there,” he said.
As a result, the girls cross-country team won their district for the first time in six years, reaching the state level of competition. The track team also continued its winning ways, claiming their second straight district crown.
And Golicher kept running as well. The pain lessened over time — becoming more manageable — through stretching and strength conditioning.
She also kept working to improve her times.
That effort also paid off.
Golicher will enter her freshman year at Wofford College in South Carolina as a runner, while she studies sociology and business.
So, despite her challenges in high school, Golicher, like her sister, will run for a Division I program in college.
She also realizes that she became a big part of Wharton’s success after all. It just wasn’t the role she thought she would play.
“I was really proud of them, and how far they’ve gone and how far they pushed themselves to even get to states,” Golicher said. “I tried my best to be a role model for them, and support them and help them push themselves to get to states and run the best times they could.”
Published August 5, 2015
