By Lincoln Shryack

If it weren’t for a lousy swim season as a high school senior, the University of Chicago’s Khia Kurtenbach probably would not be the 2017 NCAA Division III cross country champion. In fact, Kurtenbach likely never would have become a competitive runner at all if not for the sour taste left by a disappointing year in the pool back in 2014.

But urged on by a friend on the Germantown High (WI) track team, and wanting a productive way to vent her athletic frustration, Kurtenbach took up distance running just weeks before she graduated high school.

The decision changed her life. A month and a half after joining her high school track team, Kurtenbach ran 10:49 in the 3,200m to finish third at the Wisconsin state meet. She had uncovered an immense talent as a distance runner, and suddenly she was hooked.

“I ended up loving track,” Kurtenbach told FloTrack. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, where has this sport been my entire life? I love track so much.’

“I remember going back to club swimming and my club coach was like, ‘Are you sure you are doing the right sport?’’

Three years after unexpected circumstances brought her to a track as a novice runner, Kurtenbach became the NCAA DIII cross country champion in perhaps the most surprising result of NCAA XC weekend on November 18. The Chicago junior broke away from a pack of All-Americans after the 3K mark and won on the same course where she was defeated by 37 seconds just a month prior.

Witness Johns Hopkins 5th title in 6 years and Chicago's Khia Kurtenbach shock the field! #d3xc https://t.co/b4vKmYIPhK

— FloTrack (@FloTrack) November 23, 2017

Her victory in Elsah, Illinois, is all the more stunning given that Kurtenbach never intended to run cross country in college, even after her incredible senior track campaign. By the time she was establishing herself as one of Wisconsin’s best 3,200m runners, Kurtenbach was committed to Chicago for swimming.

“I had already committed to swimming at U-Chicago and I also wanted to do another swim season because my high school swimming didn’t end on a great note,” she said. 

I had unfinished business in swimming.

Kurtenbach had a redemptive freshman year in the pool — she finished 13th at nationals in the 200m backstroke — but the pull of the track beckoned her back to running in the spring. Kurtenbach joined the Chicago track team for the outdoor season, but the immediate success she experienced in high school didn’t translate right away in college.

For the first time Kurtenbach learned the cruel reality many runners face as they yearn for quick fitness.

“I was really fit coming off of swimming, but when I first joined the team I had terrible shin splints right away,” she said. “I still had to transition really slowly into running because even though I had cardiovascular fitness I didn’t have the muscle and tendon strength to be a good runner.”

Those factors contributed to a disappointing ninth-place finish in the conference 5,000m, but by then Kurtenbach had a plan to commit to training over the summer so that she could run her first cross country season in the fall. Her passion for running was too strong to ignore.

“I did my first track season at U-Chicago,” she said, “and it was the same thing where I just like, ‘I love this sport so much, I love running this has been missing my entire life. I want to do more of it.’”

This meant an incredibly tough decision was in order — to leave swimming, the sport that brought her to Chicago in the first place.

#D3XC awards, ton of credit to these athletes racing through tough conditions! pic.twitter.com/8U0kGeTbpr

— FloTrack (@FloTrack) November 18, 2017

“At that point I just had to make a decision about which sport I wanted to do,” Kurtenbach said. “I loved running races so much and that was really the key driver in making that decision to commit to giving cross country a try.”

The decision paid quick dividends. On the back of a summer of healthy training — Kurtenbach reached 40 miles per week as she was careful to guard against injury — her cross country stardom was evident. At the 2015 NCAA DIII cross country championships, Kurtenbach earned an All-American honor with her 25th-place finish.

Just as she was really starting to take off as a runner, however, the bite of injury returned. The spring following her debut cross country season, Kurtenbach suffered dual stress fractures in each of her tibias. She managed an impressive sixth-place finish in the NCAA outdoor 5K that year despite the dreaded injury, but she wasn’t done with stress fractures.

One in her foot in summer before her second cross country season and another in her fibula this past spring — which Kurtenbach says was by far the toughest to cope with — have made training a constant tightrope walk throughout her brief career.

“Coming back from that one (fibula stress fracture) was challenging because after being injured enough times you sure start to feel like, ‘Is this even worth it?’"

It’s really miserable being injured and when you first start running again you feel really slow and awkward. (It's a) long road back.

But with the help of her teammates’ support and her old friend the swimming pool, Kurtenbach persevered through each ailment as she has steadily climbed the DIII ranks.

“Maybe it’s because of my form or maybe it’s because I didn’t grow up running and so I didn’t build up the bone density, but I just can’t do very high mileage without ending up injured,” Kurtenbach said. “So I do a significant amount of my training in the pool.

“But the thing that I thought about when I was like, ‘Ok is this even worth it to do?’ . . . I still have a lot of girls on my team who needed me to be running for the team and for our cross country season.”

Kurtenbach followed her 10th-place finish at cross country nationals in 2016 with her stunning victory two weeks ago. An uninterrupted healthy stint of training since June was no doubt a huge factor in Kurtenbach’s rise to a title, but she is emphatic that it never would have been possible without her teammates being there for her during her lowest moments while injured.

Meet @UChicago’s second-ever @NCAADIII Cross Country NATIONAL CHAMPION. Congrats, @khia_kurtenbach  #d3xc #MaroonMade pic.twitter.com/Zksj2tVtVB

— UChicago Athletics (@ChicagoMaroons) November 18, 2017

“Oh absolutely, 100 percent,” Kurtenbach said of the notion that her title would never have happened without a strong support system on the team. “Because one, otherwise I would have quit, and two, cross training would have been a lot more miserable. It was amazing to win the national meet because I knew it would make my teammates and my coach really happy.”

Kurtenbach took to running naturally as a high schooler, and clearly came equipped with an abundance of talent that allowed her to hop out of the pool and become a state-caliber athlete almost immediately. But the trials she’s endured and overcome to become an NCAA champion speak less of that talent and more of her remarkable drive to give her all to a new sport that has constantly challenged her resolve.

And Kurtenbach insists she wouldn’t have found that drive without help. That’s what made her victory at NCAAs so rewarding.

“I was just so excited to make them excited,” she said. “That was 100 percent the best part about the race. I wanted to win it for them as a thank you for all the support they have given me on the really bad days and the days that running has really sucked.”