Despite never expecting to coach, Sara Mason Vergote, head coach of the Ohio State Cross Country Team, has found success with the Buckeyes. Credit: Ohio State Athletics Department
Ohio State cross country head coach Sara Mason Vergote never thought coaching would become her career, but it found her.
“I think for most people, the coaching kind of ends up finding you,” Mason Vergote said. “I assumed I was going to be a high school science teacher; that’s what I went to school for.”
Coaching was far from Mason Vergote’s radar, but coaching cross country was even less likely, she said. She didn’t participate in cross country in high school, as her first love was basketball, something she said she loved to do “more than anything.”
While playing high school basketball in the fall and running track in the spring, Mason Vergote was recruited in 1998 to the University of Toledo, where she competed in her first cross-country race at the collegiate level.
Fast-forward four seasons, and Mason Vergote had become a two-time NCAA qualifier and the Mid-American Conference 10K champion, later earning induction into the University of Toledo Athletics Hall of Fame in 2008.
Two years removed from her MAC 10K championship and diploma from the University of Toledo, coaching found Mason Vergote in 2005, she said.
“I think I’m coming up on almost 20 years in the business,” Mason Vergote said. “So obviously, it’s stuck.”
After her coaching jobs at Manhattan College, Toledo and Iowa State, Mason Vergote was instated as an assistant with the Ohio State cross-country program in 2013. Mason Vergote was named head coach of the Buckeyes cross-country program in June.
Mason Vergote said she feels she has “one of the best jobs in the world.”
“I think as coaches, we have a very unique opportunity,” Mason Vergote said. “I love the age demographic that I work with, basically for the most part 18-to-23-year-olds. I think it’s a pretty pivotal point in your life, and so I consider it a privilege to be able to coach, and certainly to be able to coach at a place like Ohio State.”
Throughout the years, Mason Vergote had the chance to work with some of the top runners in the country — including former two-time All-American Katie Borchers and current junior Addie Engel, who Mason Vergote said will “hopefully be an All-American” this year.
Engel came from a similar background to Mason Vergote: a small high school in Springfield, Ohio, where she said she ran cross country, swam and played soccer.
Mason Vergote said she relates to runners with similar backgrounds to herself.
“I’m a small school kid from the middle of nowhere in Northern Michigan,” Mason Vergote said. “There’s a special place in my heart for small school kids because they don’t have the same opportunities to see competition every single weekend. Addie is pretty special.”
Though Mason Vergote is retired from her running career, the parallels between Mason Vergote and Engel are profound.
“We have bigger groups to work with and have to push each other,” Engel said. “I feel like I can be confident in her training and that she knows what’s best for all of us. She’s going to give us what’s going to prepare us best.”
While Engel has worked with Mason Vergote in cross country before, this is junior Zubin Jha’s first exposure to her coaching, and he said he sees a difference in team dynamics.
“It’s the first year that she’s had sole control of the program on the men’s side,” Jha said. “We’ve just all been on the same page for the first time, and it’s been nice. We used to train in two different groups, but now we are more unified.”
The importance of building camaraderie has been a continued point of emphasis for Mason Vergote. Engel said after the Roy Griak Invitational in Minnesota Sept. 23, she took the team to the Mall of America to celebrate a strong performance.
Engel said Mason Vergote told the team if the Buckeyes “had a good day,” she’d take them on amusement park rides. The roller coasters are merely a symbol of the culture that Mason Vergote has already created, he said.
“I feel like it’s just all about balance,” Engel said. “She’s very serious about what we need to be serious about, but she’s not over the top with it. We can still have fun with it, and that’s when we’re running our best. It’s when we’re having fun with it.”
