Flacks Has Plenty of Reasons to Smile

Lindsay Flacks of North Hollywood Harvard-Westlake had just turned in a subpar performance in the biggest cross-country race of her career. Yet she smiled broadly as she answered questions from reporters following the national championships Dec. 13 at Morley Field in San Diego.

Flacks, a senior, had finished a disappointing 24th in the girls’ race that pitted the top eight finishers from the West, Midwest, Northeast and South regionals against one another. But she knew she had come a long way from the previous year when a groin injury had limited her to a ninth-place finish in the Division IV race of the state championships.

“You know, I was happy,” said Flacks, whose 18-minute, 36-second clocking over the 5,000-meter course left her 72 seconds behind winner Katelyn Kaltenbach of Aurora (Colo.) Smoky Hill. “I finished with a smile on my face. I was glad I kept going throughout the entire race. It probably wasn’t my best race, but that’s all right.”

Flacks, The Times’ girls’ cross-country runner of the year, romped to the Division IV championship in the Stanford Invitational in September, and to Division III titles in the Mt. San Antonio College Invitational in October and the Southern Section championships in November. But she takes the most satisfaction in finishing second in the West Region championships at Mt. SAC on Dec. 6.

“That was very exciting for me,” Flacks said. “I think I exceeded my expectations and everyone else’s so I got a big adrenaline rush because of that.”

Flacks, who has taken recruiting trips to Stanford, Columbia and Yale and has one scheduled to Princeton next month, needed a top-eight finish in the West Regional to advance to the national championships. But she wasn’t considered a top-eight contender after finishing a well-beaten third in the state Division III final in Fresno the previous week.

“I thought I could sneak into the top eight if I ran as well as I was capable of,” said Flacks, whose groin injury had flared up two days before the meet. “But I never expected to finish two seconds behind the defending national champion [Zoe Nelson].”

Nelson, a junior from Kalispell (Mont.) Flathead, led most of the West Regional race while Flacks started out conservatively and worked her way through the pack.

Flacks was in 15th place after the first mile and had moved up four spots when she began her ascent of aptly named “Poop-Out Hill” at about 1 3/4 miles. She had moved into ninth place by two miles before surging into third and then second over the next three-quarters of a mile.

Nelson, who would finish eighth in the national championships, pulled away from Flacks in the final 300 meters. But that did nothing to diminish the accomplishment of becoming the first Harvard-Westlake runner to advance to the national championships.

“If that had happened two years ago, I would have been very upset,” she said. “But I think I’ve come to the understanding that not every race can be your best. I’ll hopefully have a lot more good races ahead of me in the years and seasons ahead, but I know that every race can’t be your best.”