NCAA DIV. III WOMEN’S TRACK & FIELD - Conference steeplechase win a perfect ending for Grunwald

Four years ago, Ellee Grunwald was a reluctant recruit to St. Norbert College’s women’s track program. In May, she left the Green Knights as a conference champion. The 2021 graduate of Medford Area Senior High concluded her collegiate running career on May 2 by winning the women’s 3,000-meter steeplechase at the 2025 Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference Championships, which St. Norbert hosted in De Pere. She did it in dramatic fashion, taking the lead on the final stretch and smashing her previous personal record in the event, which she has been running since her freshman season. “Going into that race, I was seeded second, but one through four, we were all 10 seconds apart with our seed times, so I knew it was going to be a fight for the whole entire race,” Grunwald said in a May 22 interview. “I knew if I raced smart I could take first. I ended up taking first and I actually ended up with an amazing PR. I broke 12 minutes and I’d never done that in my career before. Just doing it at my home meet, my senior year, it was my last meet ever, and it was an amazing feeling to be a conference champion because I’ve never been one before. It was an incredible feeling that I had, getting first place and scoring 10 points for my team.” The win capped a track and cross country run at SNC that’s been marked by steady improvement. She made the decision to compete at St. Norbert just as she was graduating from Medford. At the time, she knew she wanted to join the cross country program. But, there was a catch. “I never did track in high school. I was a soccer player,” Grunwald said. “I really, really did not want to do track. I remember getting recruited for St. Norbert and they were like, ‘every single person in cross country has to do track.’ And I said, ‘then I am not running.’ But then I remember, I had just graduated high school. I think in May it was the last time you could call a coach and say I want to compete. I remember calling coach (Don) Augustine and said put me on the team. I just wanted to make some friends.” The first fall with the cross country team ended with a 33rd-place finish in 26:11.6 at the NACC meet. She showed up for track practice in the spring having no idea where she’d end up. But it didn’t take long to find the event she’d eventually love. “I told them I had never really done track,” Grunwald said. “They threw me in a bunch of different events my freshman year. We had a really strong group of senior girls my freshman year in the steeplechase and they were obviously graduating. So my coach was just like, ‘hey, we need some people to fill their shoes, so let’s just throw you in the steeplechase.’ He kinda used my excuse of being a soccer player, telling me you’re coordinated enough, you can do this event. “I really didn’t like long distances,” she added. “The steeplechase looked better on paper than the 10K or the 5K, so I was like sure. I’d rather do a 3K with barriers than the 10K. I did it, I ended up loving it. It’s a really engaging race, it’s a really fun race.” The steeplechase is a unique distance event with added obstacles. Female runners must clear 28 30-inch barriers during the race and seven water jumps, where a 3.66-meter long water pit exists behind a hurdle. Unlike hurdles, the normal barriers do not move. The water in the pit is shallower farther away from the hurdle, giving runners who jump farther an advantage. Grunwald posted a time of 13:32.24 in her first 3,000-meter steeplechase at the Beloit Open in 2022. She finished seventh in the conference that year at 13:11.73, fifth in 2023 at 12:37.3 and fourth last year at 12:27.68. She went into this year’s race as a contender. “Right away, I let an Aurora girl (Emma Jasutis) just take the lead a little bit,” Grunwald said. “I kinda just sat right behind her the whole race. I think I took over the race at the mile mark and then another MSOE girl, Sabryn (Bley), I’ve raced against her in previous years so I knew who she was, took me over with about 800 left to go.” Three weeks after her win, Grunwald still vividly recalled the last lap. “One of my teammates, her name is Olivia Ship, she was like, ‘come on Ellee, this is your last race. Give it all you got.’ My coach Corey Bins, he was sitting at the 200 mark, he was like, ‘come on Ellee just give yourself a chance, you’ve got this, I know you can do this.’ Right by the water barrier, that’s where everyone sits because that’s the coolest part for spectators and track athletes to sit and all of my teammates were cheering me on right there. At the last corner with 100 left to go, the head coach of the program, Don Augustine, was yelling ‘if you want this opportunity, you have to take it now and secure it.’ “I just kind of let it go and I just started sprinting. I hurdled over that last barrier and I overcame (Bley) in first place and beat her right before the finish line.” Grunwald’s time was 11:55.87, beating Bley by 2.14 seconds and her previous best time, 12:22.81 from April 5, by almost 27 seconds. “It was literally a close race the entire time,” Grunwald said. “So many people came up to me and said it was a good race to watch. In most distance races, there’s usually a clear winner about halfway through. It was three or four of us girls literally battling, going back and forth for the entire race until that last lap.” The Green Knights won their 10th straight conference championship that weekend, scoring 269.5 points to easily outscore runner-up Concordia University of Wisconsin (150). CUW in many events the past couple of years has included Grunwald’s high school teammate, Alicia Kawa. “It is kind of weird to see each other in different jersey colors instead of red and white, but I know at every meet we’d always cross the finish line and find each other and just say hi and catch up for a little bit,” Grunwald said. Grunwald’s senior year included being part of SNC’s championship distance medley team at the NACC indoor meet Feb. 28-March 1. She took the leadoff 1,200-meter leg for the team, which won in 13:03.89. “That was a fun race because my coach kind of constructed that race to be all seniors which was really cool,” Grunwald said. “We ended up winning that as well. That was really fun to do, just having an all senior team. I’ve never medaled in a track event before that. He kinda wanted to put teammates together that maybe have never had a chance to medal before or would never get a medal in an individual event.” She was 12th in the NACC cross country meet Nov. 2 with a time of 24:24.1 and placed 92nd in the NCAA Division III regional meet Nov. 16 at 24:30.9. Grunwald graduated May 18 with a bachelor of science degree in psychology with a minor in biology. In the last week of May, she began work in UW-La Crosse’s physical therapy program, where she’ll be for about the next two and a half years. “Looking back on it, I’m so thankful that I actually did do a sport in college, especially track and field and cross country,” Grunwald said. “I think it’s a very rewarding sport individually and then as a team too. It’s a hard sport. Not everyone does it, not everyone makes it through all four years, but it was honestly probably the best decision I’ve ever made.”