Miss-Delectable
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FRONT-RUNNER: Born deaf, Lahser senior developed into a cross country star
It was the first meet of Erin LaFave's first year at Bloomfield Hills Lahser and coach Nick Stration didn't know what to do with his talented freshman.
Stration became aware of LaFave when she was in middle school. She was a good runner, but not the best runner in the district. She trained some in the summer before her freshman year, so she was in reasonably good shape.
As the first meet drew near, Stration considered running her in the junior varsity race because she hadn't practiced particularly well and really wasn't one of Lahser's top seven runners.
But some of the other girls weren't quite ready for the opener, so Stration allowed LaFave to run with the varsity.
"I talked to her about being conservative for the race," he recalled, "not to go out too hard."
That is what he tried to tell her, but back then, he was never quite sure how much of his message got through to her.
Stration positioned himself about 500 meters from the start, and much to his surprise, LaFave was the leader of the pack as she approached him.
"I'm like: 'Slow down! Slow down!' " Stration said. "I was jumping around. I get pretty animated."
It didn't matter; LaFave never heard a word because she never hears any words.
LaFave is deaf, but that certainly hasn't had any affect on her running.
Now a senior, LaFave is one of the premier distance runners in the state. She finished second in the Division 2 state championship meet as a sophomore and junior, and last summer she won the 800 meters and finished second in the 1,500 and 3,000 meters at the Pan American Deaf Games in Venezuela.
Last week, LaFave finished first in the Green Division of the Spartan Relays and led the Lahser girls to the team title, its first invitational championship in at least 10 years.
The Bloomfield Hills school district is Oakland County's center for deaf and hard of hearing students, and it provides interpreters for classes and extracurricular activities.
Al Kettinger is in his 24th year interpreting for the district. He met LaFave in middle school and has signed for her in her classes and in cross-country.
He remembers that first race of her freshman year. He remembers translating when Stration told her to be conservative and her doing the exact opposite.
"Before the race, she told me she was going to go to try to win the race," he said. "She said: 'Don't tell Coach, but I'm going to go for first.' I was like: 'I'm just the interpreter.' She's been like that ever since."
That first race set the tone for what has been an outstanding career. It also set the tone for Stration and LaFave's cantankerous relationship.
"When the gun went off, I thought it was going to be easy," she said as Kettinger interpreted for her. "I took right off and got right off in front. And my coach was telling me to slow down. I was a little confused. I thought I was doing fine going for the lead.
"He was telling me to slow down and I did and two other girls caught up to me. I tried to stay with them. We got to the two-mile marker and I ended up coming in fourth place."
LaFave may have learned a thing or two about pacing that day, and Stration may have also learned about the youngster he didn't think was ready to compete with other varsity runners because she hadn't practiced well.
"She's extremely competitive," Stration said. "On race day, she turns the switch to being very competitive. After that race, I knew she had something special. So we just worked on trying to get her to practice a little harder and understand racing a little bit more."
LaFave is the second of four children and her parents, John and Kim, had a sense something wasn't right even though doctors assured them she was normal.
"We figured it out at about 5 1/2 months," said her father. "But we couldn't get anyone to cooperate and confirm it. She was our second kid, so we kind of knew how she was supposed to develop."
When doctors at Children's Hospital of Michigan finally confirmed LaFave's deafness, John and Kim were crushed.
"The tendency is to dwell on the things she won't be able to do, and you realize there are a whole bunch of things," John said. "I knew she'd never be able to hear me say: 'I love you.' But we found other ways to say things."
There are three deaf students on Lahser's cross-country team, but they aren't LaFave's only friends on the team.
"I like socializing with my friends and teaching sign language to my fellow athletes," she said. "I'm friends with some of the hearing kids, as well. Some people already know how to sign. Some of them who don't have a lot of sign experience, I teach them new signs."
Captain Laura Russell said many of the runners know some sign language because they have deaf students in many of their classes.
Russell learned that having a deaf runner is no different than having a deaf classmate.
"Erin's very important to the team," said Russell. "She's very outgoing ... though it is hard with her situation. But she doesn't just sit there. She makes a lot of jokes. She knows how we're feeling."
LaFave uses more than just sign language to communicate with her teammates.
All she needs to do is reach into her book bag and pull out her most prized possession: a T-Mobile Sidekick 3. She estimates she sends about 50 text messages a day.
"It's free; it's unlimited," she said of her Sidekick 3. "I can't live without this."
Many dedicated runners can't live without their daily run. It is like a drug, and they can't function without running.
LaFave isn't like that. She runs for a different reason.
"Competing," she said. "That's it."
LaFave almost goes through a change in personality when the starter's gun goes off.
"She thinks she can win every race she's in," Kettinger said. "She did it her sophomore year up until the very end, and they're still looking at that one under the microscope."
After earning all-state honors with a 16th-place finish at the state finals as a freshman, LaFave had a sensational sophomore season that put thoughts of a Division 2 state title in her head.
"During that whole season, I was first in every single race and I expected to be first at the states," she said. "I knew it would be really tough. I knew it would be tougher than any race I ever ran, but I finished first in all my races. So I wanted to stay right up in front. About the two-mile marker, I made my move. As I was coming down the stretch, I tried to pass the one girl, but she ran really fast. Both of us had great kicks. I tried my best, I tried to dive at the finish line, but ... "
But she and Monroe Jefferson's Bekah Smeltzer appeared to cross the finish line at the same moment. Both received times of 17:44.0, but Smeltzer was declared the winner 45 minutes after the race.
"Erin out-leaned her, but Bekah had her foot at the line," Kettinger said. "Erin came stumbling across the line ahead of her and they didn't know which way to go. They said it goes by the chip. It was bang-bang. Erin's foot was behind Bekah's, but her body was ahead.
"That was the only race she lost if you want to call that a loss -- by one-hundredth of a second. I thought they should have given both of them the gold medals."
LaFave finished second again last year, and that may have been quite an accomplishment given the circumstances. She missed four weeks of practice with an injury and didn't have much of a conditioning base heading into the finals.
LaFave is battling an injury this year, too. Trouble with an iliotibial band sent pain shooting through her hip, but she did win last week's Spartan invitational.
A year from now, LaFave will be a college freshman. She will probably run cross-country in college, but it isn't guaranteed.
"I don't know yet," she said. "I think I need a break from running. I'm getting old. I might run in college for a year because I'd really like to get in the 2009 (Deaf) Olympics and I need to prepare for that. After those Olympic Games, I might be done."
If she gives up cross-country, she may never run again. She doesn't need her daily fix.
"She's not like most runners, who run for the love of running," said her father. "Her older sister feels like running alone gives her solitude, peace. She is at a good place. Erin can pretty much shut her eyes and she's wherever she wants to be."
One place she doesn't particularly like to be is at practice.
You can almost imagine her agreeing with basketball star Allen Iverson when he said: "Practice? We're talking about practice?"
"At a practice, I might not go all-out, that's not important to finish first in practice," she said. "Coach tries to make me run really fast all the time at practice, but sometimes I have to ignore him and not listen to him."
"That's nothing new to me," Stration said, shaking his head.
Practice is one place where LaFave looks at deafness as a benefit.
"It's a good thing," she insisted. "I don't have to hear him yelling at me."
It was the first meet of Erin LaFave's first year at Bloomfield Hills Lahser and coach Nick Stration didn't know what to do with his talented freshman.
Stration became aware of LaFave when she was in middle school. She was a good runner, but not the best runner in the district. She trained some in the summer before her freshman year, so she was in reasonably good shape.
As the first meet drew near, Stration considered running her in the junior varsity race because she hadn't practiced particularly well and really wasn't one of Lahser's top seven runners.
But some of the other girls weren't quite ready for the opener, so Stration allowed LaFave to run with the varsity.
"I talked to her about being conservative for the race," he recalled, "not to go out too hard."
That is what he tried to tell her, but back then, he was never quite sure how much of his message got through to her.
Stration positioned himself about 500 meters from the start, and much to his surprise, LaFave was the leader of the pack as she approached him.
"I'm like: 'Slow down! Slow down!' " Stration said. "I was jumping around. I get pretty animated."
It didn't matter; LaFave never heard a word because she never hears any words.
LaFave is deaf, but that certainly hasn't had any affect on her running.
Now a senior, LaFave is one of the premier distance runners in the state. She finished second in the Division 2 state championship meet as a sophomore and junior, and last summer she won the 800 meters and finished second in the 1,500 and 3,000 meters at the Pan American Deaf Games in Venezuela.
Last week, LaFave finished first in the Green Division of the Spartan Relays and led the Lahser girls to the team title, its first invitational championship in at least 10 years.
The Bloomfield Hills school district is Oakland County's center for deaf and hard of hearing students, and it provides interpreters for classes and extracurricular activities.
Al Kettinger is in his 24th year interpreting for the district. He met LaFave in middle school and has signed for her in her classes and in cross-country.
He remembers that first race of her freshman year. He remembers translating when Stration told her to be conservative and her doing the exact opposite.
"Before the race, she told me she was going to go to try to win the race," he said. "She said: 'Don't tell Coach, but I'm going to go for first.' I was like: 'I'm just the interpreter.' She's been like that ever since."
That first race set the tone for what has been an outstanding career. It also set the tone for Stration and LaFave's cantankerous relationship.
"When the gun went off, I thought it was going to be easy," she said as Kettinger interpreted for her. "I took right off and got right off in front. And my coach was telling me to slow down. I was a little confused. I thought I was doing fine going for the lead.
"He was telling me to slow down and I did and two other girls caught up to me. I tried to stay with them. We got to the two-mile marker and I ended up coming in fourth place."
LaFave may have learned a thing or two about pacing that day, and Stration may have also learned about the youngster he didn't think was ready to compete with other varsity runners because she hadn't practiced well.
"She's extremely competitive," Stration said. "On race day, she turns the switch to being very competitive. After that race, I knew she had something special. So we just worked on trying to get her to practice a little harder and understand racing a little bit more."
LaFave is the second of four children and her parents, John and Kim, had a sense something wasn't right even though doctors assured them she was normal.
"We figured it out at about 5 1/2 months," said her father. "But we couldn't get anyone to cooperate and confirm it. She was our second kid, so we kind of knew how she was supposed to develop."
When doctors at Children's Hospital of Michigan finally confirmed LaFave's deafness, John and Kim were crushed.
"The tendency is to dwell on the things she won't be able to do, and you realize there are a whole bunch of things," John said. "I knew she'd never be able to hear me say: 'I love you.' But we found other ways to say things."
There are three deaf students on Lahser's cross-country team, but they aren't LaFave's only friends on the team.
"I like socializing with my friends and teaching sign language to my fellow athletes," she said. "I'm friends with some of the hearing kids, as well. Some people already know how to sign. Some of them who don't have a lot of sign experience, I teach them new signs."
Captain Laura Russell said many of the runners know some sign language because they have deaf students in many of their classes.
Russell learned that having a deaf runner is no different than having a deaf classmate.
"Erin's very important to the team," said Russell. "She's very outgoing ... though it is hard with her situation. But she doesn't just sit there. She makes a lot of jokes. She knows how we're feeling."
LaFave uses more than just sign language to communicate with her teammates.
All she needs to do is reach into her book bag and pull out her most prized possession: a T-Mobile Sidekick 3. She estimates she sends about 50 text messages a day.
"It's free; it's unlimited," she said of her Sidekick 3. "I can't live without this."
Many dedicated runners can't live without their daily run. It is like a drug, and they can't function without running.
LaFave isn't like that. She runs for a different reason.
"Competing," she said. "That's it."
LaFave almost goes through a change in personality when the starter's gun goes off.
"She thinks she can win every race she's in," Kettinger said. "She did it her sophomore year up until the very end, and they're still looking at that one under the microscope."
After earning all-state honors with a 16th-place finish at the state finals as a freshman, LaFave had a sensational sophomore season that put thoughts of a Division 2 state title in her head.
"During that whole season, I was first in every single race and I expected to be first at the states," she said. "I knew it would be really tough. I knew it would be tougher than any race I ever ran, but I finished first in all my races. So I wanted to stay right up in front. About the two-mile marker, I made my move. As I was coming down the stretch, I tried to pass the one girl, but she ran really fast. Both of us had great kicks. I tried my best, I tried to dive at the finish line, but ... "
But she and Monroe Jefferson's Bekah Smeltzer appeared to cross the finish line at the same moment. Both received times of 17:44.0, but Smeltzer was declared the winner 45 minutes after the race.
"Erin out-leaned her, but Bekah had her foot at the line," Kettinger said. "Erin came stumbling across the line ahead of her and they didn't know which way to go. They said it goes by the chip. It was bang-bang. Erin's foot was behind Bekah's, but her body was ahead.
"That was the only race she lost if you want to call that a loss -- by one-hundredth of a second. I thought they should have given both of them the gold medals."
LaFave finished second again last year, and that may have been quite an accomplishment given the circumstances. She missed four weeks of practice with an injury and didn't have much of a conditioning base heading into the finals.
LaFave is battling an injury this year, too. Trouble with an iliotibial band sent pain shooting through her hip, but she did win last week's Spartan invitational.
A year from now, LaFave will be a college freshman. She will probably run cross-country in college, but it isn't guaranteed.
"I don't know yet," she said. "I think I need a break from running. I'm getting old. I might run in college for a year because I'd really like to get in the 2009 (Deaf) Olympics and I need to prepare for that. After those Olympic Games, I might be done."
If she gives up cross-country, she may never run again. She doesn't need her daily fix.
"She's not like most runners, who run for the love of running," said her father. "Her older sister feels like running alone gives her solitude, peace. She is at a good place. Erin can pretty much shut her eyes and she's wherever she wants to be."
One place she doesn't particularly like to be is at practice.
You can almost imagine her agreeing with basketball star Allen Iverson when he said: "Practice? We're talking about practice?"
"At a practice, I might not go all-out, that's not important to finish first in practice," she said. "Coach tries to make me run really fast all the time at practice, but sometimes I have to ignore him and not listen to him."
"That's nothing new to me," Stration said, shaking his head.
Practice is one place where LaFave looks at deafness as a benefit.
"It's a good thing," she insisted. "I don't have to hear him yelling at me."