Throughout her time at Burrell and into her freshman year at Edinboro, Kadi Bauer never had much love for long-distance running. The mile was her forte and her first love.

The rising junior at Edinboro insists the 1,500-meter run/mile remains her favorite race, but she is starting to develop more of an appreciation — perhaps even a love — for cross country. And after her performance at the PSAC championship meet last fall, her commitment to cross country has grown.

Bauer finished 13th to earn all-conference first-team honors last fall. Compare that to her freshman season when she placed 65th at PSACs with a time of 25:28.

“I was really happy and also really shocked that I had made that much of an improvement in a matter of a year,” Bauer said. “But I feel like freshman year of college, with anybody, especially doing a sport, you kind of have to get used to all of it.

“So I was really really happy and really really excited about how I did.”

At the NCAA regional meet, she ran even better, finishing 15th with a personal-best time of 21 minutes, 41 seconds.

Bauer credited coach Jamison Dietrich for helping her grow as a distance runner. Dietrich took over the Edinboro track and cross country programs during Bauer’s freshman season, and she said his knack for making workouts fun has helped her improve.

Dietrich said there was no magic formula to improving Bauer’s running. It was a simple matter of having her accumulate more miles in training. Because she had run the mile and 800 so much in track and field, he said, she always had a strong finishing kick.

The trick was to build up her endurance so she could maintain that kick at the end of a 6K race.

“She’s going to keep improving,” Dietrich said. “I think last year was a good step in the right direction, but she definitely has a lot more room to grow. I would say she’s still not doing that much volume in the grand scheme of things. … Cross country is still a little long for her, but she keeps getting better at it.”

Despite her high finish and personal record at the regional meet, it wasn’t good enough to get her a spot in the national meet. The top five individuals in the regional meet automatically qualify for NCAAs, and the next two finishers not on a qualifying team also qualify.

So for Bauer to make nationals, she most likely would need a top-10 finish at regionals. That’s the next item on her list.

She still has goals for track and field, too. She placed second in the indoor mile last season at the conference championships, finishing 2 seconds behind Slippery Rock standout Anna Igims.

Outdoor season is where she will seek a large dose of redemption. Hampered by an injury for much of the spring, she placed only 18th in the 1,500 meters at the PSAC championships.

But first, she will look to continue her rise among the PSAC’s best women’s cross country runners. It’s a mindset she didn’t think she would have when she walked onto campus two years ago.

“I absolutely did not see myself becoming more of a cross country runner than I am now,” she said. “I thought leaving high school and even in high school, I liked cross country, but track was my favorite and it still kind of is. But now I am starting to become more of a cross runner.”

Though she did make one thing clear:

“The mile will still have my heart.”

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