Mitchell participated in the 2021 NAIA XC National Championship Meet at Fort Vancouver National Park in Vancouver, Washington on November 22, 2021. I was fortunate enough to capture a moment with him during his cool-down.
My name is Mitchell Hayward and I am a runner from Camas, Washington. I started running because of my soccer coach growing up putting me at the midfield position and seeing me being able too run up and down the field nonstop for almost the entire game. He told me to try out running and I would eventually give it a try in 6th grade. At first, I wasn’t anything special, mediocre at best. However, my 7th grade year I for some reason got a lot better than a lot of people with basically no training except basketball conditioning. I made the district meet and even though I placed last in my race, it was the first time I thought to myself that I could become a good runner with some effort behind it.
Throughout my last middle school years and early high school years, I became members of the Evergreen Storm Track Club and the Whisper Running Club. Both of these teams that I was apart of really got me faster and grew my love for the sport so much that it became the sport that I focused on the most throughout all of high school. Before you know it, after a bumpy year of covid and online school, I was a senior getting ready for potentially my last track season.
On a cool, crisp morning, these four comedians shows up sporting Evergreen Storm swag. Mitchell, Katelyn Flolo, Kiley O’Brien, and Connor, pose for a practice picture on April 7, 2017 at Clark College.
One of my childhood dreams was to be a collegiate athlete, but I didn’t know what sport it would be in. I would figure this out by the time my senior year started that I wanted to be a collegiate runner. Running is a sport that you hate and love at the same time. Running kills your body and makes you hate yourself for doing it, but you keep coming back and doing it because deep down you know you like it and want to see the results. I had started to look for schools about 3 months until graduation seeing where I could run at. I have some family from Indianapolis and my cousin was a runner and ran at a small catholic college called Marian University. She found out I wanted to run in college and told me to apply to Marian University and said it was a very fun 4 years for her there running. I honestly applied as a joke because I had never even step foot in Indiana up until this point in my life. However, as the pool of schools I could run at and gave me good scholarships narrowed, Marian University was still up for consideration. I would then message the Marian coach and we talked on the phone for a bit and he immediately offered me a roster spot. I even got a good scholarship academically to go there as well. After my main school I got into to run for didn’t give me a good scholarship, my gut told me to risk it and go to Marian. I committed there and it was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life. Indiana is definitely very different in most aspects from where I grew up, but after some time here, I consider it my second home. I have met tons of people from all aspects of life at this school and I’m only about to finish my sophomore year.
Running in college has been the most amazing experience here. From the travel to the training and the racing experience. The best part about being a collegiate runner has definitely been being apart of the team because it makes you feel like you are apart of a family. You do everything with your teammates. You study, live with, travel with, hang out with, party with, literally any college activity I have done has been involved with someone on my team. I also major in civil engineering and minor in Spanish. It has become hard at times being able to balance things out between athletics and school, but you always figure out how to gut things out in the end. My college life has been nothing but fun story after the next as each week passes on from being a student athlete at Marian University. If y’all want to take something away from this, if you are still in highschool and even somewhat considering being a collegiate athlete, you definitely need to. Like I said, being a collegiate athlete has been the most fun experience of my life.
My name is Connor Hayward and a lot in these last 2 years has happened ever since I left home for college. But to put this story in context, I'll take you back to my roots and how I became a collegiate athlete. I grew up in Camas, Washington and as long as I can remember I've always wanted to be a college athlete. Every weekend when I wasn't playing sports or hanging out with friends, I was chilling out with my family watching college football. I loved every moment of it, especially growing up a diehard Oregon State fan and attending games for them every year. From that point on, I knew that's what I wanted to do when I grew up. I played a lot of sports growing up. I played football, soccer, basketball, and baseball.
The sport I found the most success in would be running. It would be my long-time soccer coach, coach Troy, who saw my endurance on the field and told me to give track and field a try. I thought it would be cool and joined the track team during my sixth-grade year. I was decent at first but not the best and ended up missing the post season. Little did I know that would be the last time that I would fail to make the post season. I knew my goal next year would be to make districts. The next year, I got even better and made it to districts. Even though I got last place, I knew that I had potential in this sport. The Evergreen Storm Track Club also thought so too, and the head coach of that team recruited me right after districts. That summer I competed in my first season of USATF and had a lot of fun traveling around the state and competing against some of the best runners in Washington. That fall, I also competed in my first season of cross country as my soccer coach (coach Troy) was the head coach of the cross-country team. I was very well prepared for my eighth-grade track season, and even more so was when I met Dave and became a part of Whisper running.
Mitchell and Connor Hayward during their senior year at Camas (2021). Mitchell and Connor competed with the Vancouver-based Evergreen Storm Track Club during their middle school and high school years.
Eighth grade was nothing short of excellence, me and my brother dominated every race and soon I became the best runner at my school. I ended up placing fourth at the district meet in the mile and also did very well in the 800 meters that same meet. I knew that this was the sport that was going to take me to college level. High school was much the same, I improved every year and had massive jumps in times. I even was a part of a state cross country championship team my junior year. After winning the state title, letters and interests came flooding in with schools from everywhere around the country. But the school that stuck to me the most was Suffolk University.
During covid, I first spoke on the phone with the head coach of the track team there and he was really interested in me. I loved everything he said about the team and the school. We stayed in touch my entire senior year and a year after that phone call I traveled out to Boston to meet him and the team. I knew immediately I wanted to go here. A couple weeks later, I committed to Suffolk University for track and cross country.
My dream had come true, I was now a collegiate athlete and putting on that uniform for the first meet that fall was truly special. These last two years here have been nothing but spectacular. I'm currently working on a bachelor's degree with a major in Environmental Studies and a minor in Spanish. The best part about being a college athlete has been being a part of a team. The moment I met these guys from the moment I arrived at Suffolk, I knew that these guys were going to be lifelong friends. And not only that but you do almost everything with them like partying, hanging out, movies, schoolwork, breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc. Boston has become my second home and I've been loving every minute of it. I can't wait to see what the future is going to look like.