LOUDONVILLE – A little more than four years ago at this time, a cross country course might have felt like foreign land to Tess Shultz.
Today, the Loudonville senior has become such a dominant runner that her record-setting times put her on an island all by herself.
Heading into high school, Shultz had plans to play volleyball for the Redbirds. But when things didn’t work out, she linked up with the cross country team as a freshman a few weeks before the first meet.
The trajectory of her career – and her life after high school – took off like a rocket from there.
“I just thought it would be something fun to do,” Shultz said. “But when we hit postseason my freshman year, we made it to regionals … and I was thinking to myself, ‘I feel like I could do better.’ And I just started pushing little by little every year.”
With her sights laser-locked on a third consecutive All-Ohio finish at the state meet on the first Saturday in November, Shultz has put together a senior season for the ages.
She won all five invitationals she ran during the regular season, then was the best runner by nearly a minute at the Knox Morrow Athletic Conference Championships.
Knocking down victories has been like playing whack-a-mole for the Redbird.
Champions’ checklist
The champion checklist this year includes events at:
- Northmor – 1st out of 100 runners in 19:20
- Seneca East – 1st out of 121 runners in 18:26
- Ashland – 1st out of 115 runners in 18:49
- Dover – 1st out of 114 runners in 19:37
- West Holmes – 1st out of 52 runners in 18:59
- KMAC Championships at Kokosing Dam – 1st out of 73 runners in 18:28
Shultz’s clocking of 18:26 at Seneca East was the fastest in the history of girls cross country in Ashland County.
Third-year Loudonville head coach Whitney Snyder is not surprised.
A 2007 LHS graduate who also ran for the Redbirds, she said she knew as soon as she began coaching Shultz as a sophomore that her seasons would not be ending before November.
“The ultimate goal is always state, so for her – as a sophomore runner – to get to state, to get on the podium, she knew from there, ‘OK, here we go. This is what we want to do the next few years,’” Snyder said. “It was a fun learning experience for me as a coach, too. To come in and get to work with a hard-working, high-caliber athlete at the high school level.
“Tess has always been a high achiever writing out her goals and she fulfills them, she succeeds.”
But Shultz is emphatic that it has never been lonely at the top.
It’s the first thing she points out when people want to talk about her talent.
“It’s been through the help of so many people,” Shultz said. “I had my teammates going out and doing some of my distance runs with me, my coach designed the workouts. My mom and my sisters biking (alongside during) workouts with me really helped me.”
That scene sounds wild when the senior explains it. Her family riding beside her toting water and backpacks while strapping a speaker to one of the bikes.
Anything to take it to the next level.
“It would be such a lonely thing to do it by myself,” Shultz said, “so having all that help and all the support has been amazing.”
A season of progress
The progression has been easy to see.
Shultz became Loudonville’s first-ever female All-Ohioan in cross country as a sophomore when her school-record time (at that point) of 19:11 earned her 19th in the state in Division III.
That performance came on the heels of finishes of fifth place at the Lorain County Community College district (19:56) and seventh at the Boardman regional (19:20).
She also collected her first of back-to-back Mid-Buckeye Conference titles.
As a junior in 2023, Shultz upgraded everything, going for third at the Lorain district (20:01), fourth at the Boardman regional (19:14) and 10th at state (18:49).
The latter placement made her the first LHS cross country runner – boys or girls – to claim two All-Ohio honors.
In the spring track season, Shultz has stacked up school records in the mile and two-mile through the years while also competing on record-setting LHS relay teams.
It’s part of the reason this whole running thing went from something she was simply good at to something she’ll continue to do at the collegiate level.
Shultz has verbally committed to run for the NCAA Division I program at Florida Gulf Coast University, which competes in the Atlantic Sun Conference.
She said her junior year convinced her that running in college could be an option. Carrying a 4.0 GPA and a love of band, FFA and animals, Shultz said FGCU offered a marine sciences program she really wanted to explore. A minor in archaeology is also a likely path in the next chapter of her life.
But that’s jumping ahead.
Shultz still has a high school legacy to wrap up and it’s one that is bound to live on well beyond her years at LHS.
Before this fall’s season, she said she worked with both Snyder and a college coach, mapping out how best to stack miles in the summertime while keeping an eye on her health and overall distance covered.
“My coaches have done so much for me, calculating times and distances and all the encouragement,” Shultz said. “They’ve helped me improve so much throughout my entire running experience.”
She also credited her teammates for their dedication and specifically pointed out the relationship she has built with fellow Redbird Lettie Wenell, a junior who has been her key training partner for three years now.
“I’m extremely proud of him,” she said. “… He started running with me my sophomore year and he’s transformed into this amazing, stellar athlete who got confident.”
After hoarding so many first-place finishes this season, Shultz admitted that thoughts of winning events started to creep into the back of her mind a bit, rather than simply focusing on the typical goals she set out for each race.
But now that the postseason has arrived, it’s time to click into another gear. Shultz’s second-place time of 18:56 Saturday during the Division III Lorain district meet was a full minute better than her previous top clocking at the site.
That time would have won Saturday’s Division II race at Lorain and would have been third in the Division I competition.
In an area where crossing the finish line in less than 19 minutes has scarcely happened in the decades since girls cross country became a high school sport, Shultz has made it routine.
“To see a repeat All-Ohio runner, it’s something that not every school has,” Snyder said. “And it’s nice to be in a time in this area between Ashland and Wayne counties where we’re surrounded by a lot of really tough high school girls.”
Snyder said Shultz recently asked her what the coach’s PR was when she was in high school, then kind of chuckled when she heard the time.
Snyder laughed and replied, “Yeah, some of us don’t go to state every year.”
That’s the standard Shultz has set for herself.
“It’s very nice to have experience (on all the postseason courses), but at the same time, every year I get to walk in there and I get to be like, ‘OK, new runners, new year, new situation, let’s see how this turns out,’” she said.
“I don’t look too far ahead because there’s so much to think about at one point and I want to stay focused on what’s right in front of me,” Shultz added. “I’ve got to take it one performance at a time.”
