Kayla Montgomery, the North Carolina teen who suffers from multiple sclerosis and gained a national following last year as she developed into a top high school runner, has completed her first season of collegiate cross country.

Montgomery, 19, was diagnosed with MS as a high school freshman. Although medication helps control many of her symptoms, she still experiences numbness in her legs after intense exertion. She loses all feeling in her legs toward the end of races, and she needs a coach, stationed just beyond the finish line, to catch her after every competition.

As a senior at Mount Tabor High School, Montgomery won the North Carolina Class 4A state cross country championship and completed the 2013 Foot Locker South regional 5K in 17:22, failing to advance to the national finals by a single place. She continued to excel on the track, with a 17:16.82 eighth-place 5,000m finish at New Balance Indoor Nationals and an outdoor state victory at 3200m.

Ranking among the nation’s top college prospects, Montgomery began attracting interest from leading programs as a junior. Yet most Division I coaches shied away upon learned of the MS. One of the few to look beyond Montgomery’s health challenges was Bill Taylor of Lipscomb University in Nashville.

“Before Kayla’s official visit, I talked with my athletic training department and team doctors, to try to understand what we’d be looking at,” Taylor said. “And what I learned is that symptoms are different in each person and they change, so there really wasn’t a clear sense of how things might go once she got here. But we felt very comfortable with her character and personality and fit with our program and school. And later I also talked with her high school coach [Patrick Cromwell] to learn what we could do to prepare and if she’d need any modifications to workouts.”

When Montgomery arrived in Nashville last August she quickly bonded with team members, who recognized the diminutive freshman’s special qualities that aid her struggle with MS. “It’s just really inspiring to know that she’s not guaranteed anything,” teammate Avery Franklin said. “She could wake up one morning and not be able to run any more, so she really gives her all every single practice. She just makes the best out of everything and never gets upset, or at least doesn’t ever show it.”

Montgomery’s condition is exacerbated by heat, because the more quickly her body warms up, the sooner she begins to lose feeling in her legs. So Taylor held her out of Lipscomb’s first meet, held on a hot late-August afternoon. Instead, Montgomery began her collegiate career at the Commodore Classic, hosted by Vanderbilt, where she ran 17:34.8 to finish 18th in a field of 293. “I think it was Kayla’s best race of the season,” Taylor said. “It was an incredible debut.”

All through high school, Cromwell caught Montgomery after races. At the Vanderbilt meet, the job went to Lipscomb assistant coach Jenny Randolph. At the team dinner afterward, Montgomery and Randolph decided they needed more practice. “While we were eating, Jenny had Kayla run up to her and collapse to practice her catching technique,” Taylor said with a laugh. “They repeated this probably 10 times.”

Montgomery must also be caught at the conclusion of certain workouts, when her body’s rising temperature brings on the leg numbness. “Kayla usually can make it the first two or three intervals with the same recovery as the team,” Taylor said. “It’s rough, but she can do it. After that she often needs double the recovery. In those workouts, Jenny is always at the finish positioned to catch her.”

Montgomery maintained a varsity position all fall, running No. 6 or 7 on the team in subsequent meets. At Pre-Nationals, however, Montgomery fell twice and finished well back in the field, crossing the line 242nd of 293 competitors in 23:10.4 for 6K. According to Taylor, the first fall occurred very early and was a fluke as she got caught up in the congestion of the first quarter mile. “I don’t know what happened on her second fall,” Taylor said. “She passed lot of people in the last 1K or so but was too far back at that point to have a good finish or time.”

Montgomery bounced back to run strongly at the Atlantic Sun conference championships, finishing in 18:11.6 for 13th place, as Lipscomb cruised to their fourth-straight title. Two weeks later at the NCAA South regional, Montgomery crossed the line 57th of 196 competitors and the Lady Bisons wound up fourth, just two spots from claiming a nationals bid.

In taking stock of her first collegiate season, Montgomery recognizes the current year is a period of adjustment. “It was a little bit harder than I anticipated,” she said. “There’s just been a lot of changes and I had to get used to the higher level of competition. And the team knows we can do better. I guess we’re tired of taking small steps and hopefully next season we’ll take a few big strides, to get where we want to go.”

Taylor, though, was happy with the team’s results this year and Montgomery’s place in them. “Kayla was in the top seven all along so I’m happy with her freshman season, even though it wasn’t representative of how good she can be,” he said. “Kayla has talked to me about how the transition has been tough. By the end of her high school career she trained with the boys and could win or contend to win about any race she entered, but obviously at the NCAA DI level even the low-key races are better than any high school races. We both know she’s capable of running a lot faster than she did this fall, and I think we’ll see some really good things out of her this coming track season.”

Now enjoying some down time and base-building before the start of indoor track, Montgomery looks forward to resuming workouts and competition. “I do like cross country better because of the family feel,” she said. “With track it’s a little harder, because everyone is running different events. Still I like track, too. I just love to run in general. I just run. I just go with it.”

Related: Despite MS, Kayla Montgomery Keeps Running

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io