The Hoosier Hills Invitational had descended upon IU Track and Field late in the indoor season, two weeks before the Big Ten ?Indoor Championships.
Senior middle distance runner Samantha Gwin was running her worst 600-meter season of her career with a season-best of 1:34.32 when she was approached by IU Coach Ron Helmer.
“He said that if I didn’t get my time down, I wasn’t going to be getting on the bus for Big Tens,” said Gwin, who was about to compete in her final meet in ?Gladstein Fieldhouse.
That was all the senior needed.
She ran on to win her heat of the women’s 600-meter run with a time of 1:32.26, a personal record at the time, and enough to edge out her teammates, senior Brie Roller and junior Taylor Wiley, for first place in the Hoosier sweep.
“When Coach told me that, I just thought, ‘I have been here for four years, and haven’t done anything big,’” Gwin said. “It was time to change that. I couldn’t miss Big Tens in my senior year.”
Not only would Gwin go on to make the Hoosiers’ Big Ten roster, but she also placed in the top-eight with another personal record of 1:31.35, good enough to score for the team, her first career Big Ten point.
“It really meant a lot to me to score,” Gwin said. “It was a goal of mine coming into the season.”
Things have not been easy up to this point for the senior, competing in her fifth season with ?the Hoosiers.
Coming out of high school, Gwin boasted four consecutive years of state-level competition in the 400-meter dash, even finishing seventh for Whitmer High School in Ohio in 2009.
Her Whitmer record of 55.98 seconds in the 400-meter dash, though, is the fastest she would run the event. Her collegiate personal record sits at 57.43.
“Since I started running the 600 and the 800 in college, I started getting away from sprints,” Gwin said. “I started running cross country, and I lost some speed. I had only ever ran the events like the 200 and 400 in high school.”
Gwin struggled throughout her sophomore year as well, only improving her personal record in the 800-meter run while claiming victory in just one race.
Injury struck in her junior year as she discovered she would need to redshirt back-to-back outdoor and indoor seasons in 2013 due to a bone growth in her heel.
“I had to cross-train by myself, secluded from the team, to recover from the injury,” Gwin said. “I definitely did think about quitting. I didn’t know if it was worth it anymore.”
Running on the recovering heel in her junior outdoor season, Gwin did not win a single race and finished 17th in the preliminary round of the 600-meter run in the 2014 Big Ten Championships.
“It’s frustrating when I don’t improve,” Gwin said. “I love seeing my teammates improve, though. When they improve, it feels like an improvement to me.”
After years of eluding the big improvement that comes for many Hoosier athletes, Gwin is back in shape and ready to run at the NCAA East Regional meet in May.
“I haven’t done what I was supposed to do when I came here my freshman year,” Gwin said. “But this is my last season, so I want to qualify for nationals and place top-five in Big Tens.”
