The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/759726
60 ■ THE WOLFPACKER WHEREARETHEYNOW? After college, Leet trained with Lance Harter in California and moved to Arkansas when he took a job as the Razorbacks' coach. However, Arkan- sas proved to be a big cultural shock for her, and when the school started eliminating coaching positions, she decided to sign a contract with Ree- bok to run full-time and work part- time for them. That led her to Chicago, where she would meet her husband Brad. She ran for another year then moved into a full-time job at Reebok for a few more years before becoming a stay- at-home mother of two, son Michael and daughter Jenny, both of whom are now at Lewis College in Illinois. Mi- chael runs for the cross country team. She remained active, including running in the Boston Marathon with an older brother that worked in one of the former World Trade Center Tow- ers and survived the 9-11 attacks. "He really huffed and puffed when he got out of the World Trade Center and ran," she noted. "He couldn't get very far, so he started training. "I ran my first marathon when I was in my early 40s, and that was just to pace him through the marathon. About 11 miles in, we were running like a 7:30 pace. I said that I can't run this slow, it's hurting my foot. I took off, and I think was the second masters runner." For almost two decades, she has run an all-girls running camp that is focused, she said, on motivation, goal-setting and handling gender- specific issues. In recent years, she also became deeply involved in research in hu- man movement, reuniting with an old trainer from her high school days, Robert Narcessian. He had helped her get over a hamstring issue during her sophomore year. "He gave me these goofy drills, but I felt great," she recalled. "That made me feel so good, and it would make my run feel amazing." Now the two are teaming up in a research project that she hopes will have groundbreaking developments in understanding the rash of hip and knee replacements by focusing more on the motion and movement. "The research shows that if you tear your ACL in one knee, the likeli- hood of tearing the other knee is very high because you never change your movement pattern," she said. "You only repaired the ACL, you didn't change your movement pat- tern, and most of those injuries hap- pen when they move, when they change direction, and nobody is near them." It continues a lifelong commitment to running. Not bad for the short, little girl who wanted to play basketball. ■ After college, Leet briefly worked for Reebok in Chicago before settling down with her family, shown here visiting the Great Smoky Mountains PHOTO COURTESY JANET LEET Leet, far left, poses with her uncle John Berendsen (center) and son Michael (far right) after Michael qualified for the Division II Nationals in cross country for Lewis College. PHOTO COURTESY JANET LEET