All in the Family

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2003 issue of St. Olaf Magazine.

It’s a familiar story for many career women. Family has such a strong pull that it competes with their careers. Often, family wins.

St. Olaf women’s cross-country and track-and-field coach Chris Daymont is an exception. Not because her career won. Rather, because both family and career have taken priority. In coaching, she says “win” stands for “what’s important now.” By doing just that, Daymont has managed to stay the course at St. Olaf and with her family.

“Most women coaches don’t last this long,” says Daymont, who claims she’s just as passionate about coaching after 28 years (22 of them at St. Olaf) as the day she started. But she’s also passionate about her family. “My three kids were great track rats,” she says. Her husband, Dick, a special education teacher at Burnsville High School, often wasn’t home in time to watch the kids after school, so they would go to meets and practices with Chris’ teams. “These young women were the best role models my kids could have. They were strong and fun, and they had faith in each other.”

When it came time for college, the Daymont kids all chose
St. Olaf. Older daughter Sara ’01 was a captain of her St. Olaf track and cross-country teams and has gone on to teach social studies and become assistant cross-country coach at Minnesota’s Rockford High School. Megan ’03 is a St. Olaf senior who’s smashed three indoor track records in the 600, 800 and 1000 meters at St. Olaf and in the MIAC, and is all-time ninth in Division III nationally in the outdoor 800 meters. Tom ’06 is a St. Olaf freshman and soccer player. Not to be left out, Dick became his wife’s assistant coach six years ago in order to be closer to their daughters.

Today, Chris says, coaching Megan is the thrill of her life.

Megan was the one child in the family who considered going to college elsewhere. “I didn’t want to be that girl who stayed home,” she says. But she didn’t see schools she liked as well as St. Olaf. Competition was another consideration. “I didn’t want to race against Mom,” she says. Now she’s No. 1 on her mom’s track and cross-country teams. And not just in finishing order. Daymont’s team members are like children to her, Chris says, “but your heart is with your children. You ache for your children; you’re concerned for your team.”

Case in point: A year ago Megan approached the finish at nationals in first place, only to be nipped at the line and take second. Chris could hardly wait to reach her. “Way to go Megan!” she cheered, and Megan mouthed back to her, “I tried,” and then burst into tears.

“I couldn’t get down there fast enough,” Chris recalls.
Chris and Megan cherish their ability to share such seminal moments. “Most moms wouldn’t know what had gone into that moment. I know the hard work, the sacrifices she makes — the not going to this party or taking that trip,” Chris says.

Chris describes Megan as competitive and bold — like her mother. “When she wants me to be mom, she calls me ‘Mom,’” Chris says. “When she wants coaching advice, she calls me ‘Chris.’”

Megan invented the system after being frustrated that her mother would stand on the sidelines of high school meets yelling, “Lift your chin! Pump your arms!” Chris recalls Megan imploring, “Why can’t you be like the other moms and say, ‘I love you and we’re going to Dairy Queen later?’”

“I’m getting better at switching roles,” Chris concedes. “I have to remember my most important role is mom.”

Megan recently gained insight into another role Chris plays. In addition to being Megan’s own mother and coach, Chris is a friend and mentor to Megan’s teammates. “Half the time I go into her office, someone else is in there confiding in her,” Megan says. Unlike the tug of jealousy she felt when she was younger and sharing her mom with 50 or more of Chris’ student-athletes, Megan was simply struck by this revelation during her first year at St. Olaf.

The trade-offs go both ways. Sometimes team members have to put up with “those mother-daughter fights,” says Chris. They’ve also benefited from Megan’s “in” with the coach. Megan used to get the team out of doing laps in the workout. But in the past couple of years, Megan’s influence has had the opposite effect. She pushes her teammates to work harder. “I like to finish what I start,” she says.

That attitude, along with natural ability, has taken Megan to 10 national championships in three years of competing in cross country, indoor track and outdoor track. She’s shooting for 12 appearances at nationals — an NCAA grand slam for her college career.

Chris came to St. Olaf from Syracuse University, where, fresh from graduate school, she had filled in as coach of the Division I men’s track team while the university searched for a new men’s coach. Her first St. Olaf team consisted of three experienced runners. Five were needed to compete.

“I had to beg two more to run,” says Chris. “I realized I wasn’t going to come here to win.”

Even so, three years later she and her fledgling team won the Minnesota state championships, and the next year they were small-college regional champs. In 1979 and 1980, they took second place nationally in the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women Championships, which later became the National Collegiate Athletic Association. This fall, the Oles qualified for their 11th straight trip to the NCAA national cross-country championships.

Chris shows students that they can do anything they want to do. Her parents taught her that lesson. Because she lets anyone participate who wants to be on the team, she has runners of all shapes, sizes and abilities. “The last one on the team is as important as the first one,” she says.

Chris’ philosophy of winning includes teaching her teams to test their limits, to discover that nothing terrible will happen if they take risks. If one runner goes out too fast and loses energy, another member of the team will fill in.

Like many avid runners, she calls running a life skill. “What they learn goes way beyond running,” Chris says. “If we win or lose, you can never tell with our teams. If we are disappointed with our team finish, or individual athletes have struggled, I tell them, ‘You have exactly five minutes to stop feeling sorry for yourself.’”

— Elizabeth Child