It’s back!!! Our Senior to Freshman series! This year we are hoping to have a different college freshman each week give us an update of simply how things are going!!!
By Addison Cox, Coe-Brown ’21
Throughout my high school years when I would think about the college recruitment process it consisted of official overnight visits, hanging out with my potential teammates, getting campus tours, and meeting coaches face to face. None of that happened. Thanks to the global pandemic, my college “visits” consisted of family road trips, walking through campuses with little to no guidance, and a lot of zoom meetings. I always wanted to go to UNH and run, but there was a short period of time (Spring of 2020) where I was determined to get away from New Hampshire- so I looked at some other schools. In order to rank the schools I was looking at, I made a chart with several different categories (location, academic programs/opportunities, training, team, etc.) and scored my top 5 schools. UNH won by a landslide. I realized that I loved New Hampshire, I loved what the school had to offer, and I really wanted to run for Coach Hoppler. Since there were no official visits or in person anything at the time, I was able to commit very early in September of my senior year.
With Nationals being so late in the summer, my summer training was different-I didn’t even start until mid July. Coach Hoppler made my summer mileage buildup gradual starting at 30 miles a week and increasing by 5 until I hit 50 mile a week by the end of the summer. Coming off of that going into preseason I felt well rested and eager to start doing hard efforts.
I have been here in Durham since August 24th, and I’ve loved every second! My group of freshman teammates have gotten super close in the short amount of time we’ve been here. Six of us live in the same dorm, so we do pretty much everything together. My favorite part so far has to be running with the team. Every run and workout are done as a unit, and it makes everything about training so much more enjoyable! (no offense to my dad who biked/ran everything with me in high
school). The training has definitely more volume than high school- but I feel strong and ready to race! It admittedly is a little weird not having my dad as my coach, but I’m adjusting well and I really like Hop’s coaching style. The whole UNH athletic department really takes care of you. My first race will be this Friday in Attleboro, Massachusetts at the Providence College Invitational. I am so excited to represent New Hampshire!!!
Classes are also great, I am very excited about being an Exercise Science major and I love being done with class by noon everyday so I can get work done if I need to and relax until practice time.
Good luck to everyone this fall (especially Coe-Brown!!!), enjoy every moment! Go Wildcats!
