Shae Anderson is even more impressive than we realized. Turns out she caught an infection, got terribly bronchitis, could hardly breathe, and couldn't even jog for 2 weeks--and still dominated the California championships:
“Three days before CIF prelims, she was gone,” her father and coach Mark Anderson said of her illness. “She ran that meet. She literally was near death the next day. She couldn’t catch her breath.”
“I can barely get any air out or in,” she said later, explaining how it affects her. “If I didn’t have asthma, it wouldn’t be as terrible. Just having that is making it worse.”
A visit to a pulmonary doctor diagnosed the bronchitis, an infection of the tubes in the lungs which were already restricted by the asthma.
“You’ve got to shut everything down,” Mark Anderson said the doctor told them. “You can’t do anything.”
From CIF prelims through the CIF Finals and Masters, Shae Anderson wasn’t able to train.
“No workouts, no jogging, nothing,” Mark Anderson said. “It was complete shutdown.”
So she rested, studied and went to meets. And continued to win.
While trying to get healthy, Anderson dominated the competition in her signature events through the high school track playoff gauntlet of the
CIF-SS Divisional championships, the CIF-SS
Masters Meet, the CIF-State prelims, and finally,
the State final, walking off with six first place medals and a huge release of emotion.
“It’s like a blur,” she recalled. “I just know I was super happy. I wanted to express my feelings to everybody and tell everybody how happy I was but at the same time I didn’t want to be cocky about it. I know they all wanted to win, too. I was so happy.”
