Big River Feature Interview: Michelle Wingerter

Big River Running Company co-owner Ben Rosario is now writing cross country and track articles for St. Louis Scoop Magazine. You can read his articles in the magazine as well. Ben caught up with Pattonville senior Michelle Wingerter before the start of her senior cross country season. Michelle will be one of nearly 1,800 athletes competing in this Saturday's Forest Park Cross Country Festival.

---There are those among us who truly personify a certain term. Some say Michael Jordan personified determination. Mary Lou Retton personified grace. Tiger Woods is skill personified. Well, in the State of Missouri it may just be that Pattonville's Michelle Wingerter is the personification of the term student-athlete.

Wingerter skipped not one but two grades as she sped her way through the Pattonville middle school system before entering Pattonville Senior High School as a 12-year-old in 2004. It was that same year that she chose to join the cross country team, despite being a full two years younger than any other member of the team.

Wingerter said joining the team and being so young was not as hard as it might seem.

“I don't think I was any more intimidated than anyone else,” Wingerter said. “I made friends with the girls on the team right away and it made everything a lot easier.”

Pattonville cross country coach John Kern agreed and said that Wingerter probably benefited from having a team around her.

“I think [joining the cross country team] really helped the social aspect,” Kern said.

Fast forward three years and Wingerter is about to embark on her senior year in high school, as a fifteen-year-old. In fairness, she was quick to point out that she will be turning sixteen before her first cross country meet of the season and that she will be getting her driver's license right away.

Getting her license is far from this young lady's only goal however. She will also be taking six AP classes this semester. She will be deciding where to go to college; Ivy League on the East coast or a small liberal arts school in the Midwest . Oh, and she wants to finish among the top 25 runners in the State and earn All-State honors in cross country.

“I like to try and challenge myself,” Wingerter said.

If she doesn't finish in the top 25 at least she can win the understatement of the year award.

Obviously, Wingerter is a person who is used to achieving what she sets out to do. For whatever reason though, in three previous trips to the State Meet she has been disappointed with her results. She finished 118 th as a freshman, 96th as a sophomore, and 106th a year ago.

“I haven't had a history of doing well at State,” Wingerter said. “I'd like that to change this year.”

Wingerter said she set the goal of finishing All-State but also to improve her best time and run under 20 minutes for 5k. A definite team player, Wingerter also said she would like her team to finish in the top eight.

Kern said that her leadership is a big asset to the Pattonville squad.

“Michelle is a great story,” Kern said. “She is only 15 and she is a leader on this team.”

Wingerter is certainly doing her part having run 400 miles this summer in preparation for the season. She said her team ran together a lot all summer long and that the first few weeks of practice had gone really well.

When the school year begins it will be time for Wingerter to once again earn the title of student-athlete and earn it the hard way. Her favorite subjects include Science and Math and Art, especially pottery.

Perhaps it is her wide-range of interests that steered her away from a possible Ivy League education toward the smaller but well-respected Carleton College in Minnesota , her current number one choice. Wingerter, who speaks matter-of-factly of such things, said that she would like to major in Biology and eventually do field-work research. She would also like to run in college.

One certainly gets the sense that Carleton, or whatever college she chooses, would be lucky to have her on the squad. Though she speaks of all her life's endeavors with exuberance it is when the topic of her team arises that she most fully comes to life.

Last spring Pattonville's 3200 meter relay team, on which Wingerter is a member, made it to the State Track Meet. Wingerter spoke about the pride of that accomplishment and the mental side of preparing for competition.

“Coach Kern always focuses on the mental aspect of running; visualizing things and planning it out in your head,” Wingerter said. “That team, we didn't think we'd make it but we did.”

And despite all of the individual accomplishments that Wingerter has received over the years, and there are many, it is a goofy day at practice that she said is her greatest memory-to-date from her years at Pattonville.

“We do this thing called the flower run where the girls start out ahead and lay down flowers for the boys to come find,” Wingerter said. “At the end we have a big flower fight and it's just a lot of fun.”

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