It’s dark. It’s 5:45 a.m. but it might as well be the middle of the night. Runners are sleepily congregating in the parking lot behind the Salvation Army in downtown Atlanta. Some of them emerge from the building, others from cars. Grouped together, you can’t tell who spent the night in the shelter and who spent the night in the comfort of their own home. Everyone is in running clothes. Everyone is tired. Everyone is tired except for Hannah Chappell-Dick. And if she is, she hides it well.
The Atlanta Track Club Elite team member is coordinating the weekly Back on My Feet run for local homeless men and women. She arrives with the enthusiasm and excitement she brings to the start line of a professional race. She hugs everyone, leads them in prayer then guides them on a run.
“Running with Back on My Feet is awesome because it completely removes the performance aspect of the sport,” says Chappell-Dick. “Normally when I step on the track, it’s all business, but running and fellowshipping with people who are experiencing homelessness reminds me of the importance of the holistic experience of physical exercise.”
Holistically is how Chappell-Dick says she approaches the sport of track and field, and life in general. She believes the application and success of that approach is how she wound up being named one of the NCAA’s 2016 Women of the Year. It’s a prestigious honor given to just 30 women from the roughly 230,000 female athletes competing in all sports in Division I, II and III. Chappell-Dick’s reaction to learning she was a finalist: “Holy cow!”
“I’ve never really done anything big enough to deserve this,” Chappell-Dick says. Even the most casual observers of her academic, collegiate athletic and now professional running career might beg to differ.
Chappell-Dick attended Division III Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, on a full academic scholarship. A stand-out middle distance runner in high school, she could have attended a Division I school on an athletic scholarship, but she wanted to put as much effort into her faith and education as she did her running. It’s part of the holistic approach. “Your world is not just your sport,” Chappell-Dick says. “I purposely chose a school that would develop all parts of me as a person.”
At EMU, Chappell-Dick studied biology and exercise science. She graduated magna cum laude from the honors program. She volunteered with Big Brothers/Big Sisters and founded the Flash Track Club for 10-12 year-old children. She was on the search committee to find the university’s new president and she played violin in the orchestra. She was a six-time scholar athlete and four-time academic All-American.
“Her commitment set the bar for all my future athletes,” says EMU track and field coach Isaac Bryan. “She wasn’t just committed to her training, but her team, her faith, the school, and the sport of track and field.”
But with all those honors, there is one award she never won. “I went into college with a goal of winning nationals. I never did,” Chappell-Dick says. In 2015, she was third in the 1500m at the Indoor National Championships, just two seconds away from the title.
To Chappell-Dick, the NCAA Woman of the Year Award is the national title she never won and more. It celebrates not just her athletic accomplishments, but her academic and altruistic accomplishments as well.
“I’m OK not being perfect,” she says reflecting on her collegiate career. “It meant I could do more things.” While the award may have sparked a shocked reaction from Chappell-Dick, those who know her were not surprised.
“It wasn’t in Hannah’s nature to hold back – whether it was her competitive spirit, her passion, or her dreams,” says Coach Bryan. “She is an example of what student-athletes can be both on and off the field.”
Now, Chappell-Dick is putting that passion and competitiveness into new dreams in Atlanta. As a member of Atlanta Track Club Elite, she is training to compete on the national and international level and eventually make the 2020 Olympic Trials in the 800m or 1500m.
“I would definitely say she is a selfless team leader and a great teammate and friend,” says Sallie Post, an Atlanta Track Club Elite teammate and 2016 Olympic Marathon Trials competitor.
Chappell-Dick is also volunteering at Back on My Feet, working with athletes to find healing through running as they recover from homelessness and addiction. Using the sport she loves, she is teaching them her holistic approach. “Running is the cheapest form of therapy, preventative healthcare and social time all in one. And the best part of all that is, anyone can be a runner,” she says.
This article was republished with permission from Atlanta Track Club. View the original article here.