Cathie Twomey Bellamy gives instruction during a cross-country meet.
Marist High School photo

EUGENE — In the 1980s, the last time Hayward Field here was the epicenter of Olympic trials, Cathie Twomey Bellamy competed fiercely. A world-class distance runner, she made it into the finals three times.

In 1984, she was a member of the gold-medal winning U.S. team at the World Cross Country Championships. She ran in the World Track and Field Championships twice, including a memorable meet in Rome.

But Bellamy says the highlight of her life has been coaching runners at Marist High School.

“What a ride it was,” she says of her 14 years heading track and cross-country at the school. She decided to step down this spring to spend more time with family.

One of her greatest moments, she explains, was seeing her son’s name on the leader board at legendary Hayward. She coached Michael in running at Marist until he graduated this year. He’ll move on to the University of Oregon.

Bellamy, a graduate of St. Margaret Academy in Minneapolis, came to Eugene as a young runner expressly because of the track culture and the Olympic trials. It quickly felt like home. She’s now a mother of two and step-mother of one.

She says coaching made her a better human. It has helped her move from focusing on her own accomplishments to immersing herself in the well-being of others.

She spent as much time with students as their parents did, if not more. As track and cross-country coach, she spent two seasons a year with most runners.

Plenty of times, she led the Spartans to state championships and a few times, Marist missed the title by only a few points.

“It’s not just about running and winning,” Bellamy says. “We were trying to help mould a person who is not just a self-centered athlete . . . How do you create a competitive athlete who when the gun goes off, is out for the hunt, but when they cross that finish line, they are gracious? You can be mad, but how do you have perspective?”

Bellamy often told runners that the only thing they truly own are their names and “how you carry that is what you’re about.”

Some runners, facing adversity, needed a stare in the eye. For others, it was firm words. Still others required only a silent arm around the shoulder.

Bellamy often told runners to live in the moment, not agonizing over the past or imagining catastrophe in the future.

“You are not dealing with what-ifs, you are dealing with what’s right in front of you,” she says.

She urged students to deal with conflicts or failures on the spot so that the problems would not fester.

In the face of a running slip-up, she helped athletes form a plan in case the same issue came up in a later race so that strategy would overtake doubt.

Bellamy is not a coddler. By her own admission, she coaches by sarcasm. It seems to work, she says, because high school kids are resilient and deeply appreciative of someone who cares enough to get involved.

Her methods proved popular. As many as 70 runners would join cross-country, for example.

During the cross-country season, when a runner would set a personal record, or a personal record on a certain course, Bellamy would call a team meeting for the next day. She’d announce the records, tossing each honoree a box of animal crackers.

The idea was, that if you set a record, “you’re an animal.”

“She’s an awesome person,” says Pat Wagner, who has assisted Bellamy as track coach. “She gets the whole Marist thing. She just totally absorbs herself in the kids and the whole program. She was a world class athlete but you’d never know that. She gives personal attention to every kid, from the number one kid to the one who is out there trying for the first time.”

For this year’s Olympic trials, which revived track fever in Eugene, Bellamy was coordinator of medal ceremonies. She had to to work with both the Olympic committee and NBC.

At the end of her Marist coaching and as the Olympics approach, Bellamy says she feels compassion for runners. She knows how frightening and grueling it can be.

“The hardest thing you ever do in your life is getting on the starting line,” she explains. “It is mental and physical like nothing else. Your body gets taken to the max. Until the gun goes off, you don’t know how it will come out.”