TH E LI G HTE R S I D E
The DeMartini Twins
Amy Hayman, left and her twin sister, Sarah Noble.
“S
omeone has to be last,” I said. Okay. I’ve talked myself into it. I’ll sign up for the Mountain Avenue Mile.
I turned 82 not long ago. There’s no such thing as age groups for this community-friendly event that starts less than a block from my house on Mountain Avenue in Fort Collins. The course heads east toward downtown on a tree-shaded boulevard, then turns north and finishes a few blocks away near a small park. It doesn’t draw much of a crowd—maybe a couple hundred people who compete in six divisions ranging from a fun run to boys and girls competitive, open male, open female, a four-person relay and a Beauty and the Beast division where all the male and female entrants 40 and over compete together. Each division has a separate starting time. Participants cheer each other on, then migrate to a popular Mexican restaurant for awards and margaritas. With some trepidation, I paid my $15, pinned on a number and waited until it was time for the beauties and the beasts to approach the start line. Turns out, there was plenty of time. And I spent it well, visiting with Amy and Sarah, who I’d known years ago as the DeMartini twins, waiting with me to compete in the Beauty and the Beast division. “I’m so delighted to finally meet you two,” I said. The twins were household names in the Colorado running scene during their high school and college days in the late 1980’s-early 1990’s. As cross country runners at Poudre High School in Fort Collins, both of them earned state championships. I’d watched their careers, I recognized them, but we had never met until that early August evening on Mountain Avenue. Smiling and vivacious, they shared that between them they had 11 children ranging in age from four to 18. They were still committed to running every day. Several of their children were runners. As sisters and twins, they remained as close as they had been while growing up. “You two are a story and I want to be the one to tell it,” I told them. We made a plan to meet and talk. Moments later they sprinted out of sight. I didn’t see them again. Just for the record, I wasn’t last. There was one person behind me—so far behind me that I thought I was last until a friendly fellow told me that there was someone behind me. I did the mile in 7:46. The twins finished at 6:53 and 7:02. 30 coloradorunnermag.com
Growing up in Fort Collins, as the “middle pair” in a four-girl family, Sarah and Amy first caught the attention of Poudre High School cross-country coach Randy Yaussi. He corralled them in the hallway early in their high school careers and talked them into going out for cross-country, probably because he’d been coaching their older sister, Mary, knew talent when he saw it, and was counting on the twins’ genes. The girls hadn’t run much until then, but it wasn’t long before they were valued members of the newly-formed girls’ cross-country team. In those early days, girls’ cross-country was in its infancy in Colorado. Mary had trained with the boys. By the time the twins came along, enough girls had emerged to form a small team. “I told Sarah and Amy that they were going to be my next two superstars. I was right,” Yaussi, now principal of Ault High School, said. “They would run through brick walls for me. Super coachable. Two of the best human beings I’ve ever met. I love talking about them.” The time would come when he entered them in cross-country nationals where they took first and second place. When the girls were 15, they spent a year in Africa. Their dad, Colorado State University professor, Dr. James DeMartini, took his family to Kenya for a year where he studied cattle disease. Along with their sisters, Sarah and Amy attended the international school in Nairobi. While there, the twins got involved in basketball, field hockey and, almost incidentally, they ran track as well. Back home and back at Poudre High School, they zeroed in on running. At a 30-team cross-country event in Aurora, a suburb of Denver, they emerged first and second overall. Later, at the state crosscountry meet, Sarah took first place for her school. After being targeted and roughly pushed to the ground by a competitor, Amy picked herself up and continued to run, catching up enough to finish in fifth place. T. S. Berger, Poudre’s assistant coach, called Amy’s recovery “a stunning event.” Berger remembers a time during the twins’ final year at Poudre when Amy beat her sister by less than a second in a two-mile track meet. “With a half-mile to go, it was just the two of them out ahead,” he said. “First Sarah would surge, then Amy, and it went on like that until the finish.” Although it’s hard for me to believe, as this outgoing pair chats openly with me, the twins admit to being very shy until their college days. Coach Berger, an art teacher as well as a coach at Poudre, had both girls in class. “It was tough to get either of them to answer a question with more than a single word,” he said. He recalled treating the cross-country team to hamburgers at Burger King after an away meet. When everyone had ordered and were enjoying their meal, the twins were standing around frozen, looking forlorn. They had not ordered any food. “Turns out they had never been to a fast food restaurant, didn’t know what to do, and certainly were not going to ask anyone,” Berger said. As the time to attend college drew near, the girls made plans to go to the same school. Because of their high school running records, they had some tempting scholarship opportunities away from home. In the end, because of Colorado State University’s warm welcome from coach Doug Max, they elected to stay in their hometown. They moved into an athletic dorm where, according to Amy, “We were the annoying girls. They didn’t like us much because we had no trouble getting up at 5 a.m. to get in an early run.” And therein lies the secret of their relationship with each other, the source of their success as runners, and in their lives as wives, mothers, and compassionate members of their communities. “We’re competitive, but not with each other,” Sarah says. “We push each other,” Amy adds. They agree that their common love of running makes them closer than they would be otherwise. From the beginning of their running careers, they have competed almost as if they were one. They don’t care about which one of them comes out on top in any given race. What they do care about is that they take advantage of the push they get from each other in order to do their best. “I see them as four feet with a single focus,” Berger says. He remembers Amy dominating in their early high school years and Sarah taking over that role later on. Ask the girls and they’ll tell you they can’t remember who was faster when. And now, at age 45, with a passel of kids between them, they chuckle about who runs the fastest. “It’s the one of
