Student-athlete highlight: Riley Winebrenner

Sophomore Riley Winebrenner had a standout year of running, breaking two school records, one of which had been standing for over two decades. If you had told her this even six months ago, she wouldn’t have believed you, because although the ending results of her year are certainly spectacular, the process of getting there wasn’t always so glamorous.  

She had a rocky start in cross country, where she didn’t achieve the times she wanted. “Cross country was not a great season for me,” Winebrenner said. Looking back, she said that she wasn’t in the right headspace to perform her best. “We always talk about running being a mental sport, and I think cross [country] was just very difficult for me mentally,” she commented.  

Following this, Winebrenner had a tough time transitioning into indoor track. “Indoor [track season], the first two races I was like ‘this season’s going to suck, too,’” she said. After a series of disappointing races, Winebrenner decided to take a week off. Her first race back from the break was a 3,000m run at UW-Oshkosh’s Titan Challenge. She won her heat by over twenty seconds with a time of 10:47.22. She credited this as her turning point, saying, “I came back, I [ran] that 3k, and I was like ‘okay, okay.’” A month later, Riley competed in the 5,000m run at the Midwest Conference Indoor Track Championships in Jacksonville, Ill. She ran a stellar time of 18:19.05, breaking the school record of 18:27.11, which her teammate Cristyn Oliver had set the year prior.  

After breaking that school record, Riley said she was “ready for outdoor [track season].” Although she was feeling confident, her final season of the year was no walk in the park. Since Lawrence’s track is under construction, athletes held early morning practices at Appleton West High School’s track. “Six a.m. practices this term were pretty difficult,” Winebrenner said. Other challenges included time management. “Your body needs to recover […] I think I sleep a lot more than the average student, which is time-consuming,” she said. 

Despite this, she saw improvement in her races. As the season went on, her times began to drop. She took second in the steeplechase at the St. Norbert Invitational with a time of 11:47.77, just seconds behind Ripon College’s Mikayla Flyte. The two would duke it out at the Midwest Conference Outdoor Track Championships, where Winebrenner would finish second with 11:51.15. After championships, she was given the opportunity to compete at UW-La Crosse’s Final Qualifier. She went into the race with the goal of breaking the long-standing women’s 3,000m steeplechase record. “I’ve had my eyes on that steeplechase record since last year […] everything was working towards that,” Winebrenner said. 

Riley recalled the nerves before that race, saying, “I remember on my warmup, just telling myself that there’s nothing on the line […] It wasn’t conference championships; I didn’t have to win […] It was just me and the track.” She didn’t know if she could do it until the last 800m of the race. “Coach said something like, ‘You didn’t come this far to be number two,’” Winebrenner said. “I was coming down the final barrier and looking up at the clock. I saw it click to 11:30, and I was like ‘I’ve got to go,’” she said. She ran the final 400m in 1:28.93, the second-fastest lap of her race, to finish with a time of 11:36.65. This broke the previous school record of 11:37.64, set by Sally Schonfeld in 2002.  

“I crossed the line, and I threw my hands up. I was very proud of myself, because this year wasn’t easy […] To get two records in one year was something I didn’t think I could do,” Winebrenner said. At the time the previous record was set, women’s steeplechase had only existed in the NCAA for a year, and women were still using a “short pit” after the water barrier, making Winebrenner the first Lawrence woman to set a steeplechase record on the current water jump with a 3.66m pit.