Sequim standout to race Saturday for spot in Olympic Games

Published 12:01 am Thursday, February 11, 2016

SEQUIM — She already had dropped band and basketball, so by the time she began racing with the Sequim Middle School’s seventh-grade cross-country team, quitting was not an option.

“We would run laps to start out the class. Basically, that was the only thing I was good at,” said Stephanie Marcy Dinius, now 26 and a Boston resident.

“It was way harder than I thought it would be,” she recalled.

“I wanted to quit right away. But I thought, ‘I have to finish out this season.’ I’m so glad I did. I loved it. Never went back.”

What a long, winding road it’s been for the Sequim native.

Dinius, the former Washington state champion-turned-collegiate All-American, aims for a berth in the 31st Summer Olympic Games when she races against the nation’s best in a marathon at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Los Angeles on Saturday.

The race will be aired on NBC at 10 a.m. For information, see www.latrials2016.com.

The top three male and female finishers will be nominated to represent Team USA and the nation in the marathon at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro six months after the trials.

Like other competitors, Dinius’ road to the trials was anything but smooth. Two major post-college injuries nearly derailed her running career.

“There were moments I had all but run out of hope,” she said.

“But with my running friends and Shane [Dinius, her husband], I said, ‘This is where I’m at. I really need help.’ Your community is really important, as is having grace with yourself and patience, being OK with what happens.

“Running is such a gift as long as I have it. When it’s over, I’ll find something else.”

By her second year running at Sequim Middle School, the young Stephanie Marcy had moved up to the team’s second-best runner behind Natalie Jones.

Under the guidance of Sequim High cross-country coach Harold Huff during the fall cross-country season and sprint coach Don Lichten during track and field season, Marcy launched into an impressive prep career.

In cross-country, along with helping Sequim to four consecutive state team berths, she earned 14th place as a freshman, eighth as a sophomore, second place as a junior and, as a senior in 2006, Washington state 2A champion.

On the track, Marcy earned medals in both 1,600- and 3,200-meter races as a sophomore, then top-four finishes in both races as a junior.

In her senior year, she was state 2A champion in the 1,600-meter race and second at 3,200 meters.

In between cross-country and track seasons in that final high school season, Marcy won BorderClash, a premier prep event pitting the top runners of Washington and Oregon regardless of school size.

The marks were impressive to those close to her, including classmate Shane Dinius. The two married New Year’s Eve 2011.

“We first met in sixth grade, so we’ve known each other a very long time,” Shane said.

“I knew she was a talented runner. [Then] I realized she was a very, very talented runner.”

Marcy’s persistence in running became an inspiration at home, too: Stu and Ione Marcy, her parents, started running road races during her prep career and haven’t stopped.

Stephanie Marcy finished her prep career with school records in the 800, 1,600, 3,200 and 5,000 meters.

Following graduation from Sequim High in 2007, she earned an athletic-academic scholarship to Stanford University, which boasted one of the top cross-country teams in the nation.

Marcy ran varsity for the cross-country, indoor and outdoor track and field teams for four years at Stanford.

She was named team captain three times while earning three Academic All-American honors and four Athletic All-American honors.

On the track, she earned her first All-American honor in the 10,000 meters in 2010 by placing eighth, and another the next year, placing sixth.

Soon following her collegiate career, she suffered a hip labral tear, which involves a ring of cartilage called the labrum that follows the outside rim of the hip joint socket.

The labral tear meant surgery and the beginning of a yearlong-plus process of recovery.

“I came out of it with a better appreciation,” Stephanie Dinius said. “It was not guaranteed I would be able to run at a high level again.

“I had renewed passion and strengths, [with] dreams and goals I’d be able to chase. It was a good thing in the end.”

In the fall of 2014, Dinius suffered another setback with an injury to her sacrum, a triangular bone in her lower back. She re-injured it a second time but has been healthy since last April.

“I really put myself in God’s hands,” she said. “When it’s over, he will really make it clear that it’s over.”

The course for the 2016 Olympic Trials in Los Angeles is an atypical one for most marathons.

It features an initial 2.2-mile loop taking runners by the Staples Center, then begins the first of four 6-mile out-and-backs to complete the 26.2 miles.

“Pretty great for the spectators,” Dinius said, “but not for running a fast marathon.”

She locked up an automatic berth in the marathon trials when she raced to an eighth-place finish at the USA Half Marathon Championships in Houston in January 2014.

“Every week [I’ve run] has been my longest run ever,” Dinius said.

“It’s fun to get into this new territory. It’s pretty cool to wake up in the morning and realize, ‘I don’t know if it’s possible for me to do this.’ ”

She’ll have her parents, Stu and Ione, plus her husband, Shane, and his parents, there to root her on.

Her husband expects that this won’t be the last time she races with the best in the nation.

“I don’t think this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for her,” Shane Dinius said.

“I definitely think she’s going to come back for the next cycle. I really view this as a long-term thing; she’s only beginning to enter her marathoning years.”

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Michael Dashiell is an editor with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. Reach him at editor@sequimgazette.com.