For Annalise Celano, taking away her opportunity to run is like, well, taking away life itself.
“I love running,” the Robbinsville High senior said. “It’s my life, it’s my stress relief. I’m dedicated. My friends are there. I just love it so much.”
Which tells one all they need to know about how miserable things were for Celano last year, when knee surgery and ensuing injuries left her on the sidelines during cross country and both track seasons. To fill the void, she attended cross country meets and practice and lived vicariously through her teammates, who made it to the Meet of Champions.
“It was my kind of therapy for being out for so long,” she said. “Everyone came up to me, sometimes they’d stop in on their runs and say hi. I really still wanted to be part of the team. I didn’t want to have the feeling I wasn’t on the team anymore because it is my life and I wanted to feel I belonged.”
So she served as the team manger, taking everyone’s times and doing everything possible to remain involved with the program.
“It was great watching everyone improve,” she said. “We had a young team, a lot of new girls on varsity and it was great watching them make it to the Meet of Champs. I cheered them on so hard from the sideline and when they qualified for the Meet of Champs I was able to start running then, and I raced around with them on their victory celebration.”
Someone with that kind of dedication and determination deserves one last chance to run with her team, and Celano is getting it this year. She is back for her senior season and is projected to be in the three-to-five pack of runners that also includes Gabby Manto and Enlin Carow. The top two runners are Erin Holzbaur and Lauren Kroepfl.
“Annalise is a very strong willed individual that does not know how to give up or quit,” Ravens coach Mike Walker said. “She pushes herself and always puts in her best effort, so I never doubted that she would get back to racing.
“Last year had to be tough for her watching everyone race while she was sitting on the sidelines, but she always came and helped out.”
Like so many other talented runners, Celano got into the sport sort of by default.
“I just kind of realized why not try it,” she said. “I wasn’t really good at other sports. Why not try running? I joined the cross country team in sixth grade at Pond Road (Middle School), and I just loved it.”
As a freshman, Annalise was one of the JV’s top runners and served as an alternate for the varsity in case anyone got injured.
“I really looked up to the seniors that year, they were all amazing,” she said, adding with a laugh, “Walker was a little intimidating at first. That beard really gets you. But after a while you can joke around with him a lot.”
Celano made a big leap as a sophomore. Julia Borowski was one of the county’s top runners and was pretty much training on her own as no one else could stay with her. Walker encouraged Celano to try and make the jump and run with Borowski.
“During the summer, I ended up training with her,” Celano said. “We ended up being the top two on the team. Me and Julia went to the East Regionals that year, but we didn’t make it to the Meet of Champs. I went to the sophomore regionals because Walker wanted me to get into the atmosphere.”
Running with a talent like Borowski provided a huge boost to Celano’s career.
“First, she kind of helped me get in shape where I could train at her level,” Annalise said. “It was a big jump going from normal runs to the training atmosphere with her. We would talk during all the runs, and she would keep my mind off dying and panting.
“We started doing workouts as the season progressed. We’d pick up together on the runs, pick up pace overall, going longer mileage. I felt good running, she helped me feel good, Walker was always there encouraging us, keeping us going and setting new goals. And of course with the rest of the team behind us, they kept going and it was a lot of fun.”
Her sophomore year was a huge step for Celano.
And then came the injuries.
It started during spring track of her 10th-grade year, when she tried to push through knee pain. She got taped each day for a month but there was no improvement. After getting an MRI, the doctor said she had a torn meniscus but felt the biggest problem was in the knee cap.
Celano kept running at practice, and finally raced the two-mile. She didn’t push it, but felt fine.
“A couple weeks later Walker put me into the two-mile again and it locked up,” she said. “I knew something was seriously wrong then. I couldn’t even walk.”
So it was off to another doctor, who said there were two options for the torn meniscus – get it taken out, which would have meant arthritis and a knee replacement by the time she was 30; or have surgery to replace the 60 percent tear, which meant she would miss cross country.
Because she plans on running after school, Celano did not want to deal with the woes of knee replacement as a young adult. Thus, she opted for surgery and hoped to be back for winter track.
“It really sucked,” she said. “It was a bad time. Walker was so supportive. I told him I would be out during cross country, and he was just as devastated as I was. I was crying my eyes out, he was comforting me. All my friends were supportive, my family was great with dealing with me. Knee surgery is just terrible.”
Not to mention, it wasn’t the end of her problems.
After having surgery in June 2013, Celano spent the entire summer on crutches. By mid-September, she was able to go five minutes off and on “really slow” on the treadmill. By November, she was cleared to start training and planned on running winter track.
With the knee cleared up she eased back into track, and Walker planned on holding her out and put Annalise in a meet later in the season. The reason was to keep her fresh, but have her ready for the Central Jersey Group II sectionals.
“The knee was all cleared up, I started training hard,” she said. “Walker was so excited. I looked stronger.”
But leading up to her comeback race, Celano went sledding and afterward began to notice some hip pain.
“I didn’t know why,” she said. “I thought maybe I hit a little rock while I was sledding. I had had some hip pains in the past, but this time they saw that my joint was out. Pretty much my hip socket was out. It was raised up a noticeable inch.”
While the sled accident did not cause the problem, it did trigger the pain. Another MRI revealed three pelvic fractures, which wiped out both the winter and spring seasons.
The issue finally cleared up over the summer, and Celano is back and ready to make up for lost time. She ran in the Cherokee Invitational in early September, which was her first race in two years.
“I didn’t meet my sophomore time, I was 15 seconds off, but I can’t complain,” she said. “I was just so happy to be in a race. It’s really amazing just to be back. Every single day, I’m so thankful I can come back and run because I was out so long.
“It’s great to be back in a team atmosphere and have everyone there and contributing. It’s exciting.”
It could be an exciting year overall for the Ravens.
“We look as good as last year when we got a surprise third at the group meet,” Walker said. “We graduated a couple of seniors who were locked in the top seven, so it’s nice to have Annalise back this year.
“This team is set up for a long, successful run. We have three seniors in the top five this year, but we have a lot of talented underclassmen that might step into the last few spots and learn from the rest of them. We should be at least as good as we have been the past few years.”
Despite the fact he is counting on Celano, the coach is putting no pressure on her this year.
“He said, ‘I don’t care how you do, it just makes me so happy to see you’re able to race again,’” she said. “That helped me a little too. I’m not going to let myself get bummed out because a time.
“But I had set high goals for myself before the injury, and I still have high goals. Right now, I want to better my sophomore times and get in better shape than I was. For the team, I want us to go to the Meet of Champs. I think we can, and I want to contribute.”
Walker, who feels the distance-oriented Celano can excel in the 10K in college and in marathon races beyond that, noted that her presence on the team can serve as an inspiration after all she has gone through.
“Annalise demands a lot from her teammates, and they have to respond based on what she has gone through,” the veteran coach said. “She was voted in as a captain even though about a quarter of the team did not see her race. They based it off of how involved with the team she is, and how much she pushes herself.”
Not to mention her love of running, which is as serious as it gets.
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