3 minute read
Towne Athlete Meet
TOWNE ATHLETE
Mollie Fenn
Broadneck High School Cross Country, Track
By Tom Worgo
Blazing runner Mollie Fenn would like to forget about her sophomore and junior seasons. Who can blame her? Fenn, a senior at Broadneck High, suffered from three injuries during her sophomore year: a hip injury, stress fracture in her foot, and shin splints. As a result, she missed significant time in cross country and indoor track. Then, the pandemic wiped out the season for both sports in 2020–21. That took a toll on the Arnold resident since she thrived with running after winning two
Class 4A state championships as a freshman.
“You don’t realize how much a sport impacts your life until you can’t do it,” Fenn says of her sophomore year. “It started affecting my grades. Without running, it was hard. I had a similar feeling when Covid hit. I was running alone. I couldn’t see my teammates. I contemplated whether I wanted to continue running.”
Broadneck Cross Country and Track Coach Brianna Bostic is glad she stuck with it because of her on- and off-the-field contributions. The 5-foot-3 Fenn is back to winning championships again and earned an athletic scholarship to Richmond University. She carries a 3.75 gradepoint average. Fenn was named a Broadneck co-captain this fall.
“The leadership she showed was amazing,” Bostic says. “She was inspiring to our younger runners. She couldn’t wait to run with our new girls and get them excited about cross country. Some of the conversations she had with them could have been coach to athlete.”
Fenn didn’t have to go visit a bunch of colleges since Richmond recruited her aggressively. She verbally committed to the Spiders in October of last year and signed a National Letter of Intent the next month.
“The coaches are really in-tune with their runners,” Fenn says. “They focus on the student-athlete as a whole. All of them seem to have amazing experience there. It was incredibly important to me because I value balance.”
Fenn has been running for a long time. She started in elementary school, participating in charity fundraisers. Things got much more serious in middle school. She joined the AAU circuit and ran for Annapolis Area Christian Middle School. “My dad and I were pretty much traveling around the (East Coast),” says Fenn, noting races in North Carolina, New York, Michigan, and Kentucky among other places.
Fenn couldn’t wait to join the Broadneck varsity. “When I came to Broadneck as a freshman, it was new and fresh and I really hadn’t run the two-mile,” she explains. “It was great, and I had no pressure on me because I was so young.”
And she had success right away. The 18-year-old Fenn finished ninth in the state in cross country, anchored the 3,200-meter relay team, placed second in the individual state title in the 3,200 indoors, and captured top honors in the 3,200 outdoors.
“She is a very complete runner,” says Kris Yost, a former Broackneck assistant track coach who works with Fenn yearround. “She has great speed and incredible endurance. Those two elements together with her mindset and attitude toward the sport makes her very effective.”
After a tough sophomore year, and the missed time because of the pandemic, she returned to form in the spring of 2021 by placing second in the state in the 3,200. She carried that momentum into the fall and won a county title and took second in the region and state. Fenn wants to finish the year with a Hollywood-like ending.
“My biggest goal my senior year is to be better and faster than my freshman year,” Fenn says. “What I have done in cross country makes me excited to see what I can do in track this year.” Bostic adds: “I think she has a good chance to win another state title in the mile and two-mile. She runs very strategic and strong. She is tough to beat.”
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