Slattery publishes book at close of coaching

In her seven-year tenure as Grand Canyon cross country head coach, Sara Slattery has learned even more about how coaching is about unlocking potential, maximizing growth and offering support and inspiration to young runners.

Slattery could draw on a wealth of high-level experience and accomplished friends to achieve those goals, but it was not until a November 2019 run in Scottsdale with friend Molly Huddle, a two-time Olympian, that they figured out the best way to pass that along to younger generations of female runners.

As Slattery's GCU tenure comes to a close after this track and field season amid Hall of Fame inductions by her alma mater, Colorado, and Tempe Union High School District, she has another product passion to celebrate with the release of a book that she and Huddle co-authored.

Slattery book

"How She Did It" is the book that even accomplished runners like Slattery and Huddle wish they had available as youths. They love their sport but know how females do not progress as well as male runners from early success and cringe knowingly at the reports of harmful training methods for elite, young female runners.

Their book deals in comprehensive positivity through the words of dozens of experts. In the first section, athletic trainers, physicians, nutritionists and psychologists weigh in with advice before the remainder of the book is turned over to input from 50 female runners. The contributors include legends like Joan Benoit Samuelson, Paula Radcliffe and Deena Kastor.

"We wanted to highlight key information on nutrition, residual energy deficiency, injuries, sports psychology, sociology, the physiology of women, hormonal health," Slattery said. "We wanted to paint a big picture, kind of a recipe of the things that will help women have successful careers.

"People could've drilled all those things in our heads and told us what we're supposed to do all the time. But if we didn't see that play out in actual athletes who were successful, we weren't going to listen. Having stories from successful women at the high school, collegiate and post-collegiate scene was really important for that message to hit home."

Slattery began running just before starting at Phoenix's Mountain Pointe High School, where she credits the support of coaches Sabrina Robinson and David Klecka for her growth. She endured numerous injuries and illnesses through her collegiate career at Colorado but was still a two-time NCAA champion and 10-time All-American.

A great impetus for the book was the "Foot Locker curse," a running industry label for how only two female champions of the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships for boys and girls have grown up to be on the U.S. Olympic team in 43 years.

Slattery and Huddle wanted to provide a road map to guide girls through the bumps and curves of running. When they were teens, they had no such material except for monthly running magazines and biographies.

"You'd see these women who were professionals and looked like machines, but you didn't know the steps they took to get there," Slattery said. "You didn't realize that a lot of those women were like you. One of the biggest things that came out of this was that 90% of the women were multi-sport athletes.

"I thought these women at the top were untouchable and that they were so much different than my background, but they weren't. They were just like me. That should be reassuring to girls to get keep working hard."

Slattery has seen how the book applies to her GCU runners, but also envisions it as a tool for parents and coaches to help girls avoid the mistakes she and others have made.

The book has resonated, being one of only three female-oriented books on Amazon's top 50 list for sports performance books. It also dropped at an appropriate time for Slattery, who is closing her GCU chapter of coaching.

"It's like an emotional roller-coaster," Slattery said. "The Hall of Fame things were really exciting. At around the same time, I told the team I wasn't coming back and it was really, really hard and sad. I try to be steady most of the time, but after being here seven years, that has been a big part of my life. One of the things I'm most proud of is coaching the team."

Grand Canyon University Athletics

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