Kawa gets offer she can’t pass up from UWGB cross country

ON TO THE NEXT LEVEL

Alicia Kawa remembers starting at the bottom as a cross country runner in sixth grade. In her words, “I was in the back of the pack. I ran like 18-minute two miles.”

Seven seasons later, she continues to ascend.

A three-time state participant as a Medford Raider and a key piece of the 2018 WIAA Division 2 championship team, Kawa’s dedication to a sport she admits she did not love at first is continuing to pay off as she has become one of the latest additions to the UW-Green Bay women’s cross country program.

The signing of Kawa’s National Letter of Intent was celebrated in a ceremony Friday morning at Medford Area Senior High. After graduating this spring, Kawa will join the NCAA Division I program that competes in the Horizon League with schools like UW-Milwaukee, Youngstown State, Detroit Mercy, Northern Kentucky Wright State and Illinois-Chicago.

“I’m super excited because I didn’t think it was going to happen,” Kawa said. “It all just happened and now I’m here. Wow. I think it will be good. I’m a little bit nervous because it will be a whole new level, but it’s super exciting.

“When I was little, I thought I was going to play college basketball or softball, not running. Freshman year came and now running is my thing. It’s definitely a dream to go on and keep on running.”

Kawa gained notice locally as a youngster for her talents in basketball and softball, but she credits her mother, Andrea, for convincing her to try something else. She found her calling in cross country, especially when she got to the Raiders’ very successful high school team.

“When I went through middle school running was my least favorite sport,” she said. “My mom made me do it. But I guess I just started to like it more and more. I liked how you got to run individually but you’re still doing it as a team. I think the atmosphere of our team helped, just with how good the girls were above me, bringing me up, and then the coaches as well. Then as we got better and better as a team, everything just kept going up.”

Kawa plans on going into the prepharmacy program at Green Bay. Her offer included both athletic and academic scholarships.

“Alicia is a great runner and better person,” Medford head cross country coach Kevin Wellman said. “She put herself on the map on our team when she qualified for state as an individual (in 2017). That year she was running second and third on our team but finished first on our roster earning a trip to state. She was always giving her best in practice and in meets. She has an infectious attitude and her drive to push herself left a positive impression for her teammates. When I asked her, she said her favorite practice was flying 30s, which is a bunch of sprints with recovery jogs in between. I think she liked it because it is a hard practice. You can’t coast. You have to push it.”

As a Raider, Kawa was a four-time first-team All-Great Northern Conference runner, finishing between third and sixth in the league’s championship meet each year. Medford won that meet each year. As a freshman, she was Medford’s lone state qualifier after a seventh-place finish at the sectional meet in Waupaca and took 27th at state.

She was 17th at state and was Medford’s top finisher in its 2018 state championship run and 25th at state in 2019. Medford was likely robbed of a state trip in 2020 when the reduced number of teams participating in cross country led to a reshuffling of tournament assignments and the Raiders bumped to Division 1. Kawa was 15th in her final sectional race at Chippewa Falls in a season-best time of 20:09.1.

After the season, Kawa said her college options were narrowed down to three schools.

“I had kind of an open mind,” she said. “I didn’t know where I really wanted to go. I just went off of schools that contacted me about it. Green Bay came the latest. They were the one that put the least effort into recruiting me, which is crazy. Originally I looked at Concordia-St. Paul and Lawrence University. I was planning on applying to more but with COVID I just didn’t. One afternoon, the Green Bay coach called me and he was like, ‘hey we’ve been looking at you, your stats, we really like what we see, we’re willing to offer you blah, blah, blah. Do you want to come and run? and I was like, whoa!”

Green Bay’s head coach is Mike Kline, who has held the position since the late 1980s and has recruited in Medford before, landing runners like Jacki Emmerich, Sarah Wiinamaki and Amber Wiinamaki in the 1990s. Kawa said he’s been impressive in how he tends to communicate personally by phone rather than just texts and emails and the emphasis he seems to put on academics.

“It was so hard to pick because each school had their perks and their downs,” Kawa said. “All in all it came down for me that Green Bay felt the most like around here. It’s secluded, away from the city. Concordia is smack dab in the middle of St. Paul. I loved the thought of the big city life but I didn’t know if I could do it. Lawrence was also great. They gave me a great offer. Green Bay just felt the most comfortable for me.”

Kawa said another aspect she liked about joining the Phoenix is that the school does not have a track program. Most collegiate distance runners will compete in both sports.

“I like cross country a lot more than track, so that will be nice to have cross country and just training from there,” she said.

As for her time with the Medford Raiders, Kawa said nothing will top that October day in 2018 when they won the state title.

“Just the anticipation leading up to it, running it and all of the runner’s high we got from it,” she said. “Everyone, we all ran so hard and then we were just like, “what?” when we won.”

“She will be successful,” Wellman said. “Whichever school she decided to run for was going to be successful for her. She is willing to put in the time and effort to be successful at whatever she puts her mind to.”