Catherine Paquette - Women's Cross Country

Catherine Paquette is a captain for the 2012-13 Carnegie Mellon women's cross country team. Catherine is a junior and majoring in architecture and also competes for the track and field team.

I spent the majority of my summer before college concerned about my ability to compete for the cross country team. I had been injured for months, and had made little progress toward running again. But after exchanging emails with one of the seniors, I was convinced to come in and talk to Coach Donatelli. Coach set up doctor's appointments to figure out what was wrong and how to get healthy again, and I slowly began training with the team. That year, I barely made it to the conference meet and didn’t qualify for the regional meet. Even though I was not one of the faster runners, I loved being on the team and spending time with my unique, sometimes downright strange teammates.

The past two summers I was able to train more, resulting in more successful seasons. What's more, the team has improved as a whole. With the addition of five freshmen my sophomore year, and 11 this year, everyone has been motivated to train harder. That hard work has paid off – for the first time since 1999, the women's cross country team is nationally ranked. We are one step closer to our long-term goal of competing at the NCAA Championships in November.

As a member of the cross country and track teams, I feel extremely proud to represent CMU in Pittsburgh and away at other universities. Being on the team has been my most meaningful on-campus involvement. My advice to incoming freshmen is always, “Join a team or an organization!” It is a great feeling to be part of a group that shares the same interests as you do, and who you can rely on for advice on anything and everything. The upperclassmen my freshman year were incredibly helpful and supportive. Now that I am an upperclassman, I feel responsible to do the same, so my teammates can have as good of a first year as I did.

Running is a physically and mentally demanding sport. We make a lot of sacrifices to be the best athletes possible – committing to go to practice every day, going to bed early on Friday nights, and dedicating most of our Saturdays to races. But we make those sacrifices together, and wouldn't have it any other way. I'm glad to say my closest friends are on the team, and are people I likely wouldn't have met otherwise because we are in different grades, majors, etc. Hanging out, working out, and competing together has been an extremely formative experience during my time at CMU.