University of Tennessee Athletics
Chelsea Blaase: Journey To The Top
November 19, 2015 | Track & Field
By Stephen K. Lee, Assistant Media Relations Director
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- When Chelsea Blaase crosses the finish line of a cross country race, she does not look like her competitors.
She is smiling, not completely out of breath and exuding an electricity about her that suggests she could run the course backwards to the starting line if she wanted to.
2015 NCAA XC Championships
More Info
- When: Saturday, Nov. 21
- Race Times: Women's 6K - Noon ET, Men's 10K - 1 p.m. ET
- Where: E.P Tom Sawyer State Park (Louisville, Ky.)
- Watch Live: NCAA.com
- Live Results: Primetime Timing
Tennessee at Nationals
Best Women's Performances
2nd - Brenda Webb, 1977 AIAW Nationals
4th - Liz Natale, 1983 NCAA Nationals
5th - Patty Wiegand, 1989 NCAA Nationals
5th - Brenda Webb, 1978 AIAW Nationals
8th - Kathy Bryant, 1980 AIAW Nationals
7th - Kathy Bryant-Hadler, 1982 NCAA Nationals
9th - Kathy Bryant-Hadler, 1981 NCAA Nationals
10th - Chelsea Blaase, 2014 NCAA Nationals
Her fellow runners careen into the finish line area as if they had escaped a zombie swarm, gasping for air or sometimes collapsing to the ground with a look across their faces that says they survived the torment the course threw at them.
But not Blaase.
It is not that a 6K is effortless for Tennessee's All-American senior. She has posted 13-straight top-10 finishes with nine top-threes and all 13 of those races have required every ounce of effort she can muster.
Chelsea Blaase does not look as tired as others at the finish line because her race is not over. She looks like she can keep going because she is built to keep going. Blaase keeps her goals in front of her and every step is a step closer to reaching those goals.
Everything she has done over the last four years has led her to the 2015 NCAA South Regional title and a spot on the starting line of Saturday's 2015 NCAA Cross Country National Championships at E.P. Tom Sawyer Park in Louisville, Ky. Blaase's journey to an elite status in her sport was fueled by her unrelenting desire to reach the top and her evolution as a distance runner from her freshman year to her senior year.
OVERCOMING FRUSTRATION
Blaase's freshman year was a stark contrast to where she is now. She finished 81st or worse in four of her six races and did not crack the top 100 twice. The worst finish of her career was in her third race for the Orange and White, a 164th-place showing at the highly-competitive Paul Short Run.
She was frustrated with being nowhere near the front of the pack. Being the competitor that she is, Blaase was very unhappy with her results and each race seemed to diminish her joy for running.
"My freshman year, when I was finishing races and coming in 100th or 80th place, I was so frustrated each and every day," Blaase said. "My parents were like 'it was so hard to talk to you because you were so mad all of the time.' It was hard because you go from high school where you are like the top dog and you come to being at the bottom of the barrel, scraping for scraps. I was just out of it."
Blaase reflected on everything that went wrong for her as a freshman and spent the summer of 2013 committed to changing her mental approach to running. She did not want to live at the bottom of the standings. With support from her high school coaches, parents and friends, she laid out her goals to improve each race and reach the highest levels of collegiate cross country.
"I was sick and tired of feeling sorry for myself," she said. "If I wanted to be good, I had to make change. So I just focused on the important things that would make me a lot better."
SOPHOMORE ASCENT
Recommitted to the sport, Blaase made major strides as a sophomore. She posted five top-20 finishes and won her first race at the Crimson Classic in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
She was Tennessee's top finisher three times and found consistency running with the front groups. Blaase was a runner on the rise and raised the bar for herself to the point that she was disappointed with 10th-place showings at the SEC Championships and the NCAA South Regional.
"I think a lot of times the athletes have to take a lot of responsibility themselves in their training and what goes on outside of that," Tennessee assistant coach Rodney Stoker said. "That was the big key for Chelsea - getting comfortable in herself."
Blaase found encouragement when she looked at her results.
"I started finishing at higher places and getting better times and I was excited each and every time," she said. "I was slowly making improvement after improvement."
Blaase admits she may have run her legs maybe a little too much that sophomore year and battled through some injuries late in the year. She had made major progress. Anyone who finishes in the top 20 is good. But to reach her goal of running in the final cross country race of the year, she would need to be great.
THE NEXT LEVEL
Tennessee named Beth Alford-Sullivan as its new director of track & field and cross country on June 24, 2014, and recognized immediately that Blaase was one of the first athletes she should reach out to.
Blaase, though significantly better than she was as a rookie, was still hungry to be exponentially better. She was far from satisfied.
"When I first met Chelsea, she was pretty frustrated," Sullivan said. "She was going home for the summer and had been battling an injury for a long time and was very frustrated with where she was. She had some work to do over that summer in getting healthy and getting her head in the right spot to be happy and to be excited to be doing what she is doing."
As Penn State's head coach, Sullivan had seen Blaase in action when her Nittany Lions were in the same race as her. Sullivan knew that Blaase was talented and just needed to continue evolving as a runner, focusing on the fine details of training and recovery.
Blaase blossomed into a superstar as a junior in 2014, posting five top-three finishes with another win in the Crimson Classic. She set new PRs just about every time she laced up. Running the same course at the Greater Louisville Classic in her sophomore and junior years, she shaved over a minute off of her 5K time to vault herself from being a 19th-place finisher in 2013 to second place in 2014.
With that success, Blaase reached new levels of happiness. Excitement replaced frustration and she emerged as a positive force for the entire team.
"I couldn't be more proud of how she has evolved and been extremely coachable and extremely conscientious, but also very fun," Sullivan said. "She embraces competition. She embraces the sport. She embraces the environment of what pressure produces and that's a hard thing for young people to do."
Blaase accomplished one of her goals last November when she finished second at the NCAA South Regional to punch her first ticket to the NCAA Cross Country Championships. She shined on the sport's biggest stage, battling the country's best at nationals and finishing 10th to become Tennessee's first cross country All-American since Sarah Bowman in 2008.
"Going to nationals for the first time, that was the big goal - to make it to nationals," Blaase said. "And then to get top 10, I was like a little kid racing around at nationals thinking 'Oh my gosh! I'm here! I'm finally here!' I had gone to nationals every year in high school to watch it. Every time I was there, I was like 'I'm going to be here one day. I want to be these people.' Actually being there and experiencing it was amazing."
FRONT OF THE PACK
Blaase entered her 2015 senior season widely regarded as one the nation's best. She is a name that the competition circles on the entry list and she sets the pace at the front of the pack.
As mentioned before, Blaase has reached the point where she does not look (though she may be) exhausted at the end of races. Her standard has been raised to new heights and she even now is still getting used to it.
"This year, when I was going into races, I have had to focus on, instead of being surprised when I'm finishing at No. 1 or No. 2 or whatever, expecting that," she said. "I started not getting so nervous anymore, which was kind of making me nervous that I wasn't getting nervous."
Blaase entered every race this year as a favorite. At the same time, she remained aware that there could be someone behind her who could very well find that next gear, just as she did.
"I'm always thinking about everyone around me, even the people behind me that you don't even know about, because I was an underdog once," she said. "I know that people can make a change and they can have some crazy race. I'm always having that little thought in the back of my head that you always have to think about everyone. Don't ever count anybody out because everyone has got that same exact chance when we step on the line."
Her win at last week's NCAA South Regional was impressive as she was at the front from start to finish and crossed the line nine seconds before the second-place runner. Winning regionals was a major accomplishment for Blaase, an All-American in indoor and outdoor track and a 2014-15 Academic All-American, as it is the most impressive of her four career wins. It also marks a major road marker for her in her growth as a runner. That freshman frustration is now a senior patience and self-trust. The grind of the process is now an appreciation of the journey and the experience to compete against the best.
"Hard work is expected," Sullivan said. "It's more the ability to balance all of the demands that are on you from the academic side of things to the athletic side of things to the expectation, the pressure, the internal pressure, the intrinsic motivation to be the very best you can be. She has taken the steps through the year and a half that I've known her. She has just grown with those steps to be able to be in a great position, especially with two seasons left on the indoor and outdoor track schedules. I think it's going to be a great ride."
Blaase's goals continue to climb. She hopes to compete for a spot on the U.S. national team this summer. She approaches the cross country starting line one final time as a collegiate athlete this Saturday and intends to hold nothing back.
"I'm just out there to compete and give it everything that I've got," she said. "That's all I can do. When I finish, I'm tired and I don't have anything and I don't want any regrets."
