By Mark Bergin, WRAL senior multiplatform producer

Emily Cole remembers how she felt the day before the 2018 Texas cross-country state championships.

Cole was a senior at Klein High School in Klein, Texas, which is about 25 miles northwest of Houston, preparing to compete in the 5,000-meter run. Cole remembered her drive from her home in the Houston area to where the state meet was held in Austin.

“Unfortunately, driving up that day, I started feeling super sick,” Cole said.

Cole started the season with one goal: Running a mile in less than five minutes. Before that point, she had spent most of her time athletically playing basketball and volleyball.

“That summer, I started really dialing in on my nutrition … my sleep and my recovery,” Cole said. “And I ended up eating super healthy.

“I was cooking a lot of my own food and I didn’t realize living in Houston, where it’s really hot outside, I’m starting to run 40 few miles a week and I’m sweating a lot. I’m a very salty sweater and I’m not eating very salty food or I don’t know what electrolytes are.”

On Nov. 2, 2018, the night before the state meet, Cole was nauseous. She could not keep any food or pasta down. She went back around 8 p.m. to doze off in her Austin hotel room.

At her parents’ request, Cole’s cross-country coach, Tim McGuire, checked on her later that evening. He knew she had not been feeling well, but what he found was startling.

Cole shook violently when McGuire lightly touched her shoulder to see if she was OK.

“When we went to go check on her, [I] woke her up a little bit and she kind of looked at me and acknowledged me, and then, her eyes rolled into the back of her head,” McGuire said.

McGuire said he and the teammate with whom Cole was sharing the room rolled her onto her side. He then cleared the room of Cole’s teammates, and called 911 and Cole’s parents. His actions likely saved Cole’s life.

The coach rode to the hospital with Cole in an ambulance, and he stayed in the emergency room until around midnight, when Cole’s parents arrived at the hospital.

“I still had kids I had to get up and coach the next morning at the state meet,” McGuire said. “It was a very weird and uncomfortable weekend.”

Cole spent two days in a coma caused by hyponatremia, which is a condition where there is too little sodium in the blood.

“The whole night was crazy … mainly for everyone else,” Cole said. “I don’t really remember it.”

McGuire said he had never experienced anything like what Cole went through.

“The heat in Texas, we [have] experience with that constantly. You grow up with it,” McGuire said. “This was different.

“And so, this was something obviously, I’d never ever experienced it before.”

McGuire said he didn’t know what would have happened had he not checked on Cole.

“I have no idea, absolutely no idea,” McGuire said. “I don’t want to know.”

McGuire said he also had to address the other Klein cross-country runners before the state meet.

“I didn’t tell them everything that was going on, just that she wasn’t going to be able to run, but that she wished them well,” McGuire said.

McGuire said qualifying for the state meet is an accomplishment in itself.

“I didn’t want them to see as much concern on my face,” McGuire said.

Cole was surprised when she regained consciousness after her two-day coma.

“I was doing everything right and what society tells you to do: Drink more water and eat healthier food, and ended up in this life-threatening situation,” she said. “So, that’s really why I woke up from that, and I was like, ‘What the heck just happened?’”

Duke honored Emily Cole’s scholarship offer after her two-day coma

Further complicating matters, the weekend of the 2018 Texas Cross County State Finals was also when Cole was supposed to make her official visit to Duke University. Instead, she was in a coma.

Cole said she was fearful Duke would revoke her scholarship offer.

“My dad had to call coach [Rhonda] Riley, who was the coach at the time, and somehow explain to her the situation without making her super scared,” Cole said. “Thank God [she] and Coach Dan Goetz were kind enough to just offer for me to come back a couple of weeks later.”

Riley recalled getting the call from Cole’s father.

“I remember being so excited about her visit,” Riley said. “When her dad called that she was in the hospital, I immediately went to, ‘Oh, my gosh … Is she OK?'”

Riley said it was scary to hear Cole was in the hospital.

“I remember him [Cole’s father] just kind of apologizing, like, ‘I’m so sorry that she can’t make it. I hope that we can reschedule,'” Riley said. “And, I just remember saying, ‘Of course we’re going to reschedule. Like, this is life. This happens. Let’s find another weekend for her to come.'”

Even with Cole’s hospitalization and coma, Riley said she never thought about pulling the scholarship offer.

“That had no bearing on where she was in my eyes,” Riley said. “It was more out of like, OK, what’s going on? Because, there’s a reason she has gotten into the hospital and we need to figure out what this is.”

Riley was Cole’s coach for her freshman and sophomore seasons at Duke.

“She was very open and honest,” Riley said of Cole’s official visit weeks later. “And, our talks were longer than normal … just because it was so easy to talk to her and she would open up and share, more than just running.”

Cole said she was thankful she had previously taken an unofficial visit to Duke.

“They had already met and knew who I was and what I was about,” Cole said. “If they hadn’t, I think it would have been a little more difficult for them to give me that situation, but it was a really precarious situation because Duke was definitely my dream school.”

Cole said she fell in love with the Duke campus as a middle schooler. One of Cole’s older sisters, Kristin, attended Duke.

“I remember going to visit her for parents’ weekend when I was in middle school, 12 years old, and just skipping around Duke’s campus with her,” Cole said. “It looks like Hogwarts. It’s so beautiful.

Cole also took official visits to the University of Alabama and the University of Pittsburgh. She unofficially visited Stanford University and Vanderbilt University, where her sister Julia attended. Still, Duke stuck out the most.

“I love the way that the culture at Duke isn’t just running all the time because I had been so academically focused my whole life, and all the girls on the team had interests and passions outside of running as well,” Cole said. “That was really important to me because running wasn’t my whole identity.

“And also, the coaches were just amazing. They were a huge part of why I wanted to go there too.”

After Cole’s coma, she said it took her several weeks to recover and resume a sense of normalcy.

By the time the spring 2019 semester came, she qualified for state in the mile and two-mile races in track and field at the 6A level in Texas. She finished fourth in the mile run at 4 minutes, 50 seconds. She finished third in the two-mile run at 10 minutes, 28 seconds.

“From not even being close to qualifying for state and being in a super-competitive state like Texas, I was just, I was really, really happy with that,” Cole said of her senior season in track and field.

Cole’s start at Duke, writing a book

Cole’s freshman track season in the spring of 2020 got cut short due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

As a sophomore in the 2020-2021 season, Cole began running the 3000-meter steeplechase. She ran the event in 10 minutes and 25 seconds in her 2021 ACC Championships debut.

Cole said could use her height (5-foot-9). Her background in volleyball and basketball helped her with the obstacle race, which requires participants to jump over a barrier followed by a pit of water.

“In high school, the race is a 2,000-meter race, and in college, it’s a 3,000-meter race,” Cole said. “So, I hadn’t even raced this event.

“I didn’t know if I would like it or enjoy it at the college level, but I just really believed that I would.”

Around this time, Cole began writing her book “The Players’ Plate: An Unorthodox Guide to Sports Nutrition.” The book helps dispel misconceptions about athlete’s nutritional needs and how athletes’ needs differ from the general public. She interviewed Olympic medalists, professional athletes and registered dietitians to share what works, why and how it differs from person to person.

“I just really knew that I needed to create this resource for younger athletes that would have changed my life as a high school athlete,” Cole said.

Cole becomes an All-American, competes for nationals

Around the same time, Cole also changed her phone password to 0948. Nine minutes and 48 seconds was the steeplechase qualifying time for the Olympic trials.

Cole said her junior year cross-county season was tough. In the fall of 2021, she was diagnosed with celiac disease, a chronic digestive and immune disorder that damages the small intestine and prevents the body from absorbing nutrients from food. It’s triggered by eating gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, rye and other grains.

“It was actually a really big blessing in disguise because I realized this was a big reason why I wasn’t able to recover as well,” Cole said. “It was the main reason why I’d been getting sick and feeling super fatigued.”

In a meet about three weeks before the 2022 ACC Outdoor Track and Field Championships, Cole broke her personal record in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, running the event in 10 minutes and 15 seconds.

“I remember running a 10:15 and being so stoked about it. I was like, this is 10-second PR, this is so amazing,” Cole said.

Cole was still 27 seconds short of qualifying for the Olympic trials with about three weeks to go when Duke hosted the 2022 ACC Outdoor Track and Field Championships

“It was a really big moment, and I just felt super ready for it,” Cole said. “The last quarter of the race just felt amazing and closed super hard. And, I actually ended up running exactly a 9:48.”

Cole’s performance earned her second place in the ACC behind Notre Dame’s Olivia Markezich, who ran a 09:45.31.

“I set the Duke school record, and I also qualified for USA’s, which is the equivalent of the Olympic trials in non-Olympic years,” Cole said. “So, that race honestly, completely changed my life.”

A few weeks later, Cole qualified for nationals for the first time.

“That was definitely the race that kind of changed my career and allowed me to believe that I plan to run professionally and kind of have what it takes to run the next step,” Cole said of the 2022 ACC Outdoor Championships.

The next season, Cole was named to the USTFCCA’s All-American honorable mention in the 3000-meter steeplechase.

What’s next for Emily Cole

Cole graduated from Duke in May with a major in computer science and a minor in economics. She said she wants to help girls in sports by helping them with health technology and nutrition.

“Everyone is so individualized, and I really do believe that AI and machine learning have such huge potential to help people better understand how they’re different from those around them and how to just feel so much better,” Cole said.

Cole said she plans to compete and run professionally. She is staying in Durham to train with the Duke coaching staff. She credits Riley, Goetz, former Duke assistant track and field coach Angela Reckart.

“She has young girls that look up to her and she’s not just a pretty face,” Riley said of Cole. “I mean, she backs it up and she’s a hard worker.”

Cole dedicated “The Players’ Plate” to McGuire. She recalled how McGuire would end each practice.

“I’d always just leave feeling so inspired, and I think it’s one of the coolest things. He talked about how every day doesn’t need to be an A-plus day. It’s all about consistency and stacking together the little days, but building up that work.”

Cole remembers the summer runs in 100-degree Texas heat.

“Summer miles make fall smiles,” Cole said. “It was definitely a grind.

“That was definitely one of the bigger quotes that kind of helped remind us, yeah, this is a grind now, but it’s going to be so fun in cross-country seas

Source: wralsportsfan.com