Born to run: Schwarz, 11, set to return to Brady Street Sprint field

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By Eric Page | Friday, July 18, 2008 |

Claire Schwarz, 11, of Davenport will compete in the Brady Street Sprint again this year. The soon-to-be sixth-grader at Sudlow Intermediate has higher hopes for this year's event. (Eric Page/Quad-City Times) Buy this Photo

You remember Claire Schwarz.

She was the tiny 10-year-old who qualified for the women’s field of the Bix 7 Brady Street Sprint last summer.

She finished last but made a lasting impression.

Now 11, Schwarz is set to run the Sprint for the second consecutive year July 25 and also is registered for the Quick Bix the next morning.

“I just like running up the hill,” said Schwarz, a soon-to-be sixth-grader at Sudlow Intermediate School in Davenport. “It’s really hard, but once you get done, you’re really happy that you can say you ran up that hill.”

The oldest of Dave and Elizabeth Schwarz’s three children, Claire seemingly has been running nonstop since she showed up at one of the Cornbelt Running Club’s local milers four years ago.

She does it for the enjoyment. She does it for the exercise. She does it because she loves to win.

“I just like the feeling of crossing the finish line and walking up there when they call my name to get the trophy,” Claire said after a recent Mississippi Valley Track Club practice at Pleasant Valley High School.

“To be honest,” her father added, “she just likes the trophies. She’s a trophy hunter and likes the attention.”

Attention has been the one thing Claire has been unable to outrun.

She started winning almost immediately, claiming age-division titles in dozens of local races. She holds the Eisenhower Elementary School mile run records for girls in the third, fourth and fifth grades. She won the 18-and-under division of the St. Ambrose Killer Bee, a 5K, when she was 8.

“Claire’s a worker, a real worker, and she loves to run,” said Ben Hulbert, Schwarz’s coach at the MVTC the past three summers. “I think she’s got an inner drive that’s just her, because she wants to succeed. You can’t teach a kid that. They’ve got to have that themselves, and I think she’s got it.”

Schwarz, whose personal best in the mile was a 5:12 at a local race last fall, is a two-time Iowa AAU cross country state champion, winning her age group in 2006 and 2007. With the MVTC, she focuses on the 400 and 800, because, Hulbert says, “We want to teach kids to run fast first and figure out distance as their bodies develop.”

Schwarz ran at the national Junior Olympics last summer at the University of Tennessee and has qualified for this year’s event, which starts July 28 at Eastern Michigan University. She earned a spot in the field with personal-best performances in the 400 (1:09) and 800 (2:37) at the USA Track and Field regional meet last month.

Through the MVTC, Schwarz has gotten to be friends with Bettendorf High School track and cross country standout Sam Cameron, who won last year’s Brady Street Sprint. It was Cameron who encouraged Schwarz to qualify in the first place.

“It’s hard work just to come out here and do it every single day,” Cameron said of the MVTC, which practices five days a week. “For her to love every single day is a big thing. She’ll go a long way.”

Claire has immediate goals. She wants to improve on the 1:45 it took her to get up the hill last July — she qualified in 1:20 this year — and she has benchmarks for her trip to nationals later this month.

But she’s also looking well beyond the horizon.

“I want to make it to the Drake Relays, make it to state and hopefully be a state champion,” she said. “And I want to win the Sprints, like Sam.”

“She says she dreams of a Division I scholarship,” her father added. “I, personally, don’t care. I just hope she runs and would like to see her run for a college team. I just think that would be a great experience.”

Last week, Claire went to the track and cross country camp at the University of Iowa. She’s not being recruited yet, but it’s a good bet she will be in the future.

Hulbert’s experience — 12 years with the MVTC and many years as a coach in Maryland — tells him Schwarz will settle in as a middle-distance runner, probably the 400. He said she has the build of the great ones, the long, powerful legs. He expects she someday will be one of them. It’s rare, he said, for a child at that age to have such supreme talent coupled with an unquenchable thirst to succeed.

“One day,” Hulbert said, “She’s going to be a real talent. She has that mindset to win.”

Eric Page can be contacted at (563) 383-2277 or epage@qctimes.com.

The Schwarz file

Name: Claire Schwarz

Age: 11

Hometown: Davenport

Family: Oldest of Dave and Elizabeth Schwarz’s three children

School: Will enter sixth grade at Sudlow Intermediate School in the fall

Affiliations: Member of Cornbelt Running Club and Mississippi Valley Track Club

Resumé: Two-time Iowa AAU cross country state champion, two-time national Junior Olympic qualifier, two-time Bix 7 Brady Street Sprints qualifier, winner of several area 1-mile races

Other hobbies: Dance, piano, band

Someday: “I want to make it to the Drake Relays, make it to state and hopefully be a state champion.”