Chasing down a dream: Schley reflects on college running career

By Cheyenne Thomas When she ran under the Loyal Greyhound name, Savannah Schley was an accomplished runner. She was a four-time state qualifier in cross country and competed in track and field in the 400m and 800m events as an individual, as well as on the 4x400m and 4x800m teams in multiple trips to state. She broke school records, and when she went off to compete in track and field at the University of Minnesota—Duluth, she was all set to continue her promising running career.

Now, four years later, Schley is looking back at what she accomplished at the collegiate level. From 2022 to 2025, she competed as a member of both the indoor and outdoor track and field teams, specializing in the 800m race, winning the 2024 Outdoor All-Conference award and the 2024 Indoor All-Conference award in that event. She also took second placeAll-Conference in the 800m in the 2025 Outdoor season. In relay events, she was part of the 4X400m relay team, which won All-Conference in the 2024 Outdoor season.

Most recently, she qualified for the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in the 800 meters. Schley ran the fourth-fastest time in the Central Region and the 22nd fastest in the NCAA, happening with a second-place finish at the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference Outdoor Track and Field Championship May 10 in Duluth. She ran a 2:08.57 — a personal record — and punched her ticket to the NCAA Championships in the process.

The championships were held at the Colorado State University Pueblo ThunderBowl in Pueblo, Colo., on May 22-24. With a time of 2 minutes and 14.17 seconds, Schley took 21st place overall in the 800-meter dash prelims, falling short of the finals.

When going into competition at the collegiate level, Schley said she expected the work would get harder than it had been in high school.

“I knew it was going to be a step up competing against people in college,” she said. “The pool of athletes that you are competing against is smaller and better than what you competed against in high school. I was really excited and nervous to be able to compete at the college level because I knew it would be totally different.”

And it was. The work to match the other athletes in the field of competition was much harder and required far more miles to be put under her feet than what Schley had needed in high school. But she said everything that had been done in high school for running helped prepare her for the more rigorous training needed to reach new heights in college.

“It changed a lot from high school,” she said. “In high school, I had good coaches with my running. They met me where I was at and they didn’t push me beyond what I was capable of handling. So when I went to college I wasn’t burned out already by running. I just had so many good coaches.”

Her high school cross country and track coach, Jim Genteman, noted how Schley grew as an athlete over the years.

“Early on, you could see the drive in her,” he said. “Not only in middle school and high school track and cross country, but she won the Spanky’s Run in seventh and eighth grade. She started out as this little girl that was nothing but knees and elbows to a gifted athlete that worked hard to fulfill her goals. In high school she was always doing something. Being a basketball standout, did not allow her a lot of time to train in the offseasons. I would spot her running with her dad (Dad was riding a bike) on the roads from time to time during the summer. She would feel guilty if she wasn’t pushing herself and putting in the time.

'Her personality allowed her to talk to everybody and to respect all opinions when communicating to us and other coaches she conversed with. So it is not a surprise that she has succeeded in her running career. It is not easy transitioning from the hometown community to the competitive college environment. She has a great support staff in her family and friends that made her journey possible. Great young lady!” In college, Schley ran six days a week for her training, putting her focus on track and field with the 800m run for her individual event. Track and field was her main sport, although she did also compete in cross country in college to keep herself in shape even during the off-season. Those races were hard, she said, as the mileage increased from a 5,000-meter course to a 6,000-meter course.

“I really went to college to run track, but I also ran cross country,” she said. “I noticed the difference between the 6K (in college) and the 5K (in high school). It was a big difference there at least.”

Another major difference Schley saw in her running career in college was the amount of travel she had as a runner. Rather than just crossing county lines to attend meets, she was crossing state lines, getting the opportunity to compete in Colorado, Washington state, California, and other places. It opened her up to more of what was out there in the world and that too shaped her.

“I loved it,” she said. “I got to spend time in California, competed across the Midwest, went to Colorado, to Seattle to see different parts of the U.S. It was super fun.”

That wasn’t to say that her college career didn’t come with its own set of challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic made it hard to get started, as she was entering college while there were still masks and other restrictions in place at events.

“When I came in my freshman year of college in the fall of 2021, COVID-19 was still going on,” she said. “Running and competing looked very different in those years compared to my later years at college.” Injuries too became more common as the increased training put more strain on her body.

“When I was in high school, there were no serious injuries. But in college, there was definitely an uptick. I was training my body so much more. The stresses took a toll. There was always an injury that took me out of a couple meets every year.”

Now that her four years of college running are over, Schley said she is taking things slow and taking a bit of a break from running to allow her body to heal before she continues on to the next phase of her life, which she hopes will be in the field of digital communications.

Taking a final look back, Schley said she would have never been able to reach the achievements she did in college if not for the support of the Loyal community during her many years of running.

“I’m really glad to have the Loyal community support me with running,” she said. “I had a family of runners who supported me and I feel so blessed to have had the help from all of them.”

Savannah Schley, a native of Loyal, recently placed second in the 800m at the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference Outdoor Track and Field Championship in Duluth.

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

Mason Gay from Owen-Withee (right) took first place in the Spencerama Dairy Dasy 5K held on the morning of June 14 in Spencer. Seth Roewe of Marshfield (left) took second. For more photos and information about the run, please see page 8.

Time for summer run fun

VALORIE BRECHT/STAFF PHOTO