As most seniors are just finding out which school they will be attending in the fall of 2012, senior Steph Benko has already committed the Lafayette College, where she will be running on the Division 1 Lafayette Leopards varsity track and field team.
When Steph joined the indoor track and field team as a freshman, she had no idea of the untapped, natural talent that she possessed and the success that she would achieve as captain of the girls track team. “I didn’t really know I wanted to run in college, until I talked to some of the coaches and realized that it could actually happen,” Steph said.
Steph started receiving and sending recruitment letters during the outdoor track season of her junior year. With the help from the New Canaan High School’s girls’ track and cross country coach, Art Brown, Steph was able to get in contact with a few coaches from the schools she was interested in.
“The recruitment process was relatively easy, I only visited one school and I had been talking to that specific coach for a couple months. It wasn’t until after my visit that they told me I had to make a decision as to whether or not I was going to run there,” Steph said.
Given the impressive times and results that Steph has achieved throughout her high school career, including her new personal best of 11:14.25 in the 3200m, the recruitment did not come as a surprise. “I always believed and felt that Steph could run in college, but I was never sure about what level,” Coach Brown said. “Stephanie is very self-motivated. She knows how to run her race and is also very good at mentally preparing herself before an event.”
Steph finished off her last season of indoor track as a NCHS ram impressively, placing first in the Girls’ 3200m race at the Indoor Class L State Championship and thirteenth in at the CIAC State Open Championship.
But as the average second semester seniors begin to slack off, Steph is as intense and focused as ever, as she prepares to embark on the next stage of her athletic career: becoming a Lafayette Leopard. “I have no idea what to expect, I am trying to get more mileage in, because I am going to be running cross-country, but I am going to take it as it comes,” she said. “I will have to see how it is, but I think it would be nice to run all four years of college.”
