WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
tial. I obviously was undertrained in
high school. I honestly believe I just
had 100 percent trust in my coach. I
didn't doubt Mike for a second.
"With that faith in him, I just
trained and gave him everything I
had. And then my naiveté of being so
young, I feel like I went to the depths
of what I was capable of."
A year later, the Big Ten upped its
distance to 6,000 meters, and Walter
— who had picked Michigan over
rival Michigan State during the re-
cruiting process — crossed the finish
line in first place at the conference
championships in East Lansing.
"Mike and I didn't really talk about
winning, at all, leading up to the
race," Walter said. "He had a plan to
put me in a position to be there at the
end, and whatever I had left, it was
up to me to finish. But he put me in
the group to attack.
"He said, 'You'll be in the front
pack,' and as a sophomore, with
some doubts still, he did a tremen-
dous job building my confidence to
get me through 80 percent of the race
with the leaders, and with 20 percent
left it was up to me.
"I remember that race so vividly.
I didn't have a strategic plan but it
was at Michigan State, so the entire
racing community from Michigan
was there. We were very competitive
against Michigan State at the time,
so you had that extra adrenaline
from the rivalry, and I ran through
the Michigan cheering section and
got so much of an emotional high —
everyone is going nuts — that I just
took off."
Walter is the co-creator and partner for
UGo Bars, a healthy snack food imagined by
her during her years playing around in the
kitchen as a Wolverine.
PHOTO COURTESY REBECCA WALTER
