Mary Hohnholt earns assistant coach of the year

In only her second year of coaching, Mary Hohnholt was voted assistant coach of the year by her peers in the Wyoming Coaches Association.

Although she is new to the official title, Hohnholt has been around the Saratoga cross country program for years. Her husband, Rex is the head coach.

“Rex is an awesome coach, and I’m lucky to coach under him,” Hohnholt said. “We talk about running and I have seen how he coaches, so I think we have the same style of coaching.”

Hohnholt got interested in running back in sixth grade.

“I’ll always remember field day in sixth grade, we had a race and I beat most of the boys,” Hohnholt said after learning about the award Dec. 5.

Running is in Hohnholt’s blood - her dad ran track and field - and after that day on the field in sixth grade, she never looked back. Hohnholt ran track in high school in Montana and went on to Weber State.

She was state champion twice in high school, and she earned all-conference while running the five-kilometer and 10-kilometer races in college.

Hohnholt’s competitive spirit gets the better of her and she cringes when she admits she never made it to nationals.

Today, Hohnholt finds her challenge in running marathons and in passing on her love of running to the next generation of endurance athletes.

“It’s something I really have a passion for, and I guess I want to share that with the kids,” Hohnholt said. “This is most sports’ punishment, I want to make it fun.”

Since becoming assistant coach, Hohnholt has had her runners doing high knees in the lake and has posted photos of the meets around Saratoga High School.

“We just want to make (the program) more visible,” Hohnholt said. “It’s not a big glory sport, there’s not the same recognition there that is in some sports.”

Hohnholt hopes that visibility translates into more students trying out for cross country in the future. The 2012 Lady Panthers’ team was the first in recent history to not have enough athletes to compete at state. Rebuilding the women’s team parallels Hohnholt’s comeback. The marathon runner competed in her first 10K since her knee surgery two years ago.

Right now, though, getting the numbers back in the girls’ program is Hohnholt’s biggest goal.

She hopes performances from runners like those from eighth grader Katie Loose last season show other girls what they can accomplish on the course.

“Kids see that success and they want to be part of that,” Hohnholt said. “If you can show them progress, that’s exciting too, that they can set goals and get faster each week.”

The key to making those strides is off-season work. Hohnholt said the coaches get a handful of days to do some summer work with their runners, and even a little bit of consistent running over the break can help them maintain a baseline.

“If we could just get our kids to run a couple days a week over the summer, it would make a huge difference,” Hohnholt said. “Otherwise they start out behind, and it takes a while to get it back.”