Geiss battles through injury to finish season strong

Correspondent photo / Robert Hayes Heartland Christian junior Rebecca Geiss (18) competes in the Division III girls 3200-meter run at the state championship, earning fifth place at 11:14.62.
COLUMBUS — Being a distance runner is truly a year-around sport if the goal is to make the postseason. Starting off with cross country meets in August spanning through the state track meet in June, and that doesn’t even take into account all of the summer workouts involved.
Heartland Christian junior Rebecca Geiss is no stranger to the adversity a distance runner faces. While her fifth-place finish in the Division III girls 3200-meter run wasn’t a personal best, in some ways her time of 11:14.62 was more rewarding after a spring plagued by injuries.
“I think this season was really a tough place for me. I had a stress fracture in my foot and I’ve been in a boot for five weeks,” Geiss said. “I was only able to cross train. I think I only ran about six times before this, so I think this race is really a testament to God’s grace and my grit. Just coming out here, it’s just a great opportunity. Just showing up was my only goal before districts. I really wanted to be done, it was so incredibly hard, so I just told myself I have to show up and see what I can do.”
This all came after Geiss became the 18th and final athlete to qualify for the race as the second at-large bid following regional action. Rittman’s Adyson Fosen also qualified at-large out of the same North Royalton region that Geiss ran.
Geiss also qualified in the 1600 as an at-large, but opted to skip the event to focus on the 3200 later in the morning.
Knowing that she wasn’t 100 percent, the pressure of having to place high wasn’t there like it may have been in the past.
“It definitely took a lot of the pressure off just because I wasn’t looking to win or felt like I’ve done too much this season that I had pressure to do good. I think it was easier coming from the bottom going up than it was being at the top going to the top.” Geiss said.
Having her share of state experience helped too. Last season, she took fourth place in Dayton, while earning the silver medal during her freshman campaign in 2023. That’s adding in three trips to the state cross country meet, including a state title in 2023 after defeating Maplewood’s Caleigh Richards by one-tenth of a second. Geiss was the state runner-up this past fall at Obetz.
Other local athletes such as Mineral Ridge freshmen Kylee Molnar and Chalker’s Abbey Castle provided some local competition as well.
“I think that my experience definitely helped me, just knowing and racing all of these girls before and just knowing how they’re going to run and how they’re going to do it, what their goals are. I think that definitely played a role in how I could keep going and knew how they would finish.” Geiss said.
Having sustained her injury in mid-March, the road to a smooth spring season was never going to be the easiest.
“That’s what’s part of the sport, you’re going to face things that you don’t know why they happen. The Lord in my life has given me things to overcome to give me more confidence and to build me to have a better character throughout this sport,” Geiss said. “I think this gives me a lot of confidence to see that I can do that off such little training.
“Going into my senior year, just knowing that I didn’t have the best track season that I wanted, I know that God has so many better things in store for me.”