Background

She may have been a state champion coming out of Cadillac High School, but Katie (Erdman) Waits knew she was in for big changes running for the University of Michigan. “I was scared out of my mind,” she recalls. “Everyone was so much better than me.” When coach Mike McGuire told her midway through freshman preseason camp that she’d be an All-American someday, she thought he was nuts. “The whole fall, I was so sore,” she says.

Flash forward to 2007, when Katie earned her 10th All-American honor – the most in Michigan history – and finished second in a thrilling NCAA 800-meter final, notching a two-second PB and an Olympic “A” standard time of 1:59.35. “That race was a gift,” she says. “The only way it could have been better is if I had won.”

Katie still trains with McGuire, making the hour-long drive to Ann Arbor three days a week from Toledo, where husband Seth is attending medical school. With a degree in English and Spanish, and a secondary-education teaching certificate, Katie hopes to someday teach English.