Big dreams pay off for Courtney Frerichs

NIXA — At first glance, Courtney Frerichs didn’t look much different than the high school students parading around the Nixa High School football game on Friday night.

That is, until the crowd waiting for the gates to open started chanting her name when she arrived, and she finally took a spot at an autograph table, with a security guard standing nearby.

That’s the mark of an Olympic athlete returning to her hometown, where an adoring crowd came out to see her, get an autograph and maybe a selfie.

“It’s incredible, they’ve been behind me this whole time,” Frerichs said. “It’s made it so fun to know that.

“Everyone was so supportive of me when I was in high school, and to have that continue has been absolutely amazing.”

Frerichs was less than a week removed from her final appearance at the Rio Olympic Games, where she qualified for the 3,000-meter steeplechase finals last Saturday, then finished 11th in the finals on Monday.

It’s been a whirlwind few months for the 2012 Nixa High graduate.

She won a national title in the steeplechase for New Mexico in June, setting an NCAA record in the process, then finished second in the Olympic Trials in the event to clinch her first Olympic bid.

Frerichs signed with the Nike-backed Bowerman Track Club, got engaged to Griffin Humphreys, and went to Rio to represent her country.

She admits there are times she has to wonder if it all isn’t just a dream.

“I was underneath the stadium, waiting to go onto the track (for the finals in Rio), and I got really excited,” she said. “It kind of hit me, like ‘Oh my gosh, this is really happening.’

"This morning on the plane ride back to Springfield, I was kind of like, ‘Did that really happen?’ Because it felt like a dream at the same time, it happened so fast.”

Frerichs started her college career at Missouri-Kansas City, as a cross country and distance track runner. She was turned on to the steeplechase by coach James Butler.

When he moved on to New Mexico, she joined him as a graduate transfer, with one year of eligibility remaining.

Now she will be running as a full-time job with Bowerman, and putting her degree in biology on the back burner for now.

“It’s such a dream come true,” Frerichs said about her being able to run while being paid for it. “I always thought I was going to go to medical school, and that was my dream. But my first dream as a child was to be an athlete.

“I’m excited that, as my mom says, I get to play for my job.”

Frerichs is looking forward to getting settled in a new home — Portland, Ore., where she will be based while running for Bowerman, and finish planning her upcoming wedding.

But the next step in her Olympic dream is never far from her mind.

She said thoughts about the 2020 Games in Tokyo started immediately after the finals in Rio.

“Basically right away,” Frerichs said. “Being there was fun, but it’s my job. So you think about the next step in your job. So it was like, ‘OK, I learned from this one, now how can I use this knowledge to get better for the next one?’ "

Frerichs had dreams of making the Olympics as a gymnast, and also played soccer in high school, in addition to her track and cross country work.

But just a few years later, she represented her country in an event she didn’t even know existed when she was in high school.

Frerichs had a solid message for young athletes who share similar dreams to the ones she had.

“Just that any hard work goes a long way, and you have to follow the path where it goes,” Frerichs said. “You might think you’re in one thing, and you just have to go with it and see what can happen and have fun along the way.

“You never know what’s going to happen.”