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Running Headlong Into the National Spotlight
SENIOR KAELA DISHION’S ALL AMERICA CROSS COUNTRY FINISH PUTS STAN STATE PROGRAM ON THE MAP
By Lori Gilbert
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As she stood at the starting line of December’s 2022 NCAA Division II Women’s Cross Country Championship at University Place, Wash., Kaela Dishion knew it would hurt.
For the first time in her 10-year running career, the Stanislaus State senior was suffering from an injury, right hip pain she believes was caused by new running shoes. She hadn’t trained in two weeks, other than on an elliptical.
“The gun went off and I remember the first step I took, my body was shell shocked,” Dishion said. “I guess there was so much adrenaline that the pain wasn’t really there.”
Talent and desire overcame discomfort, and she finished the 6K race in 34th place in 21:16.5 to earn AllAmerican honors. She’s the third Stan State women’s cross country runner to be among the top-40 finishers at nationals to become an All-American, the first since Carrie Luis in 1994.
The Warriors’ 18th place finish at nationals and Dishion’s recognition ended a fall Warrior Athletics season punctuated with great success by women’s teams.
Dishion and her teammates advanced to the nationals for the second consecutive year after winning the 2022 NCAA Division II Women’s Cross Country West Regional Title for the first time, and they won the California Collegiate Athletic Association for the second consecutive year.
The women’s soccer team tied for the CCAA regularseason championship, its first title since 2013, and the volleyball team, led by husband-wife coaches Lauren and Stephen Flowers, went 19-10, their .655 winning percentage the best in school history.
The cross country team, though, created national buzz with Coach Darren Holman’s seventh season.
“We are in that conversation when people mention schools that are the best for running in the west region or in the country in Division II. In the past, we weren’t,” said Holman, named NCAA Division II West Region Coach of the Year and for the second consecutive year, CCAA Coach of the Year.
The success is built on Holman’s creating a supportive atmosphere, the addition of Assistant Coach Courtney (Anderson) Heiner (a Stan State Hall of Fame member who was the 2014 national champion in the 1,500), individual talent and teamwork.
That was exemplified in Dishion’s nationals experience.
“I was thinking when we were driving to the race, ‘This is your last cross country race. It’s going to hurt. You can do it. Run for everybody else,’” she said.
Cross country depends on individual performances, but also team support. When Dishion and fellow senior Najwa Chouati suffered flu-like symptoms at regionals, their teammates turned in their best races to secure the team championship.
Dishion, who had been expected to win the individual regional title, with the flu and a sore hip finished fifth.
A top-15 finish at nationals was expected, too, and even though she finished 34th, she’d already done plenty for Stan State’s program.
- Kaela Dishion
A highly recruited runner out of Bret Harte High School in Angels Camp, Dishion went to Division I St. Mary’s College in Moraga. After two years she realized it wasn’t a good fit and chose to transfer to Stan State.
Holman had been her first coach when he started a running club for youth in his hometown of Sonora. He’d helped her discover a love of running.
“There was a lot of judgment,” Dishion said. “My coming from DI to DII alarmed a lot of people, but at the same time, I think some people respected it, because they knew I was recruited by a lot of big-name universities.”
She trusted Holman.
A champion-caliber runner at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo whose post-collegiate career was ended by injury, Holman rediscovered his love of running when he began coaching his son and other youth.
His athletes succeeded, prompting an invitation to coach the Stan State men’s and women’s teams.
It took longer than expected to build his programs, although there were individual successes, and the men’s team finished 11th at nationals in 2019 having never before reached that level in school history.
Now, Stan State is known for distance running and drawing recruits from afar. Landing a runner as talented as Dishion helps. The rewards were mutual.
Holman helped her script a dream senior year, and if the injury interfered with better late-season finishes, she’d already shown what Stan State had done for her.
Dishion had broken St. Mary’s school record at Santa Clara University’s Bronco Invitational when she ran 20:36 as a sophomore in 2019.
In October, at the same meet in front of all who questioned her decision to run at Stan State, Dishion finished in 20:00.
“That was special,” Dishion said. “It showed me the training was working. I was running much faster than I’d ever run before.”
It was the beginning of many performances that put Stan State, and Holman’s program, on the map.
“Stan State is changing the running scene in California,” Dishion said. “There’s a stigma we deal with every day, that it’s DII and in the Central Valley. We’re slowly breaking that down and it has been great, proving what we can do.”
