By Christopher Tremblay

Norwood High School senior Natalie Martin is hoping that her new-found love of running is her ticket to college. Although she is still early in the recruiting process, the Norwood native is hoping to get a chance to run on the collegiate level somewhere in the northeast.

According to cross country coach Alanna Keady, Martin is the first girl to cross the finish line for Norwood on a regular basis and has the ability to continue running as a distance runner for a Division-1 college.

Being that running is now at the top of her priority list, it wasn’t always her number-one sport. During her younger years, she connected with lacrosse and played the sport for a significant amount of time. Martin was a member of the club team Gold Star Lacrosse and also played volleyball.

On the lacrosse field, Martin was a midfielder playing both the offensive and defensive sides of the field so there was a lot of running to do on her part, something that she loved doing.

Come her sophomore season, she was looking for something to keep her in shape for lacrosse season so she joined the Mustangs indoor track team. Not only did she do well running the mile in six minutes, she found that she really loved the competition of the sport. By the end of the season, she had gotten her time down to around 5:30.

As an already runner for the indoor and outdoor track and field teams for Norwood, Martin decided last fall that she wanted to continue running and cross country just made sense to her. 

“Cross country was much different than just running on the same track,” Martin said. “I loved running through the trails and different courses with scenery. Each race, I would focus on just going out and running my race, doing what I could.”

Before the cross-country season would come to an end, however, Martin found out that she had a stress fracture in her hip and would have to step away from running for a while to get better. With that information, she would also have to miss the entire indoor season.

“Not being able to run that season was really tough,” Martin said. “I missed being out there with my team. To me, running is very therapeutic and a stress reliever where I get to focus on something else while doing it. That season I just had to focus on getting better and hopefully be ready for the outdoor season.”

Martin was able to step back onto the track last spring and lowered her mile time to 5:17; something she is hoping to lower even more before she departs Norwood High School. While the mile is her main event, she occasionally runs the 2-mile and is a member of the 4x800 relay team for the Mustangs.

Coming into this fall’s cross-country season, Martin was looking drop her current personal best time of 19:15 to hopefully under a sub 19 minutes.

“Lowering my time is my goal but having only run in one season of cross-country I want to stay healthy this season and grow gaining experience in the sport,” Martin said. 

During her dual meets, Martin said she usually finds herself up front running with the top runners, but when taking part in Invitationals, which she finds a little tougher, she is somewhere in the top ten but has managed to medal in all of her races for Norwood.

When the two other seasons come around, the Norwood runner would like to attempt running the 800-meter run to see how she can do. But the biggest thing would be to get her mile time even lower: hopefully somewhere around five minutes.

If she can continue to decrease her times during all three seasons, she believes it will influence the recruiting process and help her get into a college where she can continue to run in some capacity.

While she has noted that she would like to be in the northeast somewhere, she believes things will all start to come together for her once she starts her official visits to colleges.

“Things will depend on how I click and what the campus’ are like when I get to go on those visits,” Martin said. “I’ll also be looking at how the coaches run their practices and the chemistry of the team; then I’ll have a clearer idea.”

College may be an important fixture in her future, but for right now, the senior has all three seasons to improve upon her running to help her get into a college that fits to her liking.