INDIANAPOLIS — On Nov. 27, 2010, a rainy, unseasonably cold Saturday in Fresno, Calif., Holland Reynolds, a junior cross-country runner and team captain for San Francisco University High School, pulsed through the 3.1-mile course upright, trailing only the race’s leader. As she strode into the final 800 meters of the CIF state championship race, however, her body, already beleaguered by a cold, betrayed her. Lactic acid filled her legs; breathing became labored. Her thin frame, freezing in a singlet and shorts, twisted forward.
“I felt my body deteriorating,” she says. “It was like a zombie walk.”
Reynolds, running for her coach, Jim Tracy, who had been diagnosed with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, took measured steps and pumped her arms as she passed an orange- mesh fence decorated with black banners emblazoned with the message “Leave Nothing.”
She strained, stumbled, hunched over, and then collapsed. Her knees hit the muddied grass first, then her hands. She let out a small yelp, and writhed in pain.
“You can see the pain and the struggle in her eyes,” says Giants punter Steve Weatherford, who watched video of the tortured attempt to finish when Tom Coughlin presented it during the Giants’ first team meeting on July 29. “It set a tone. We’re ecstatic to be in the Super Bowl but we have the self-sufficiency to get past anything.”
The Giants trained their attention on Reynolds. On the screen, one of her assistant coaches stood at her side and bent down to encourage her. He did not assist her as she rose, crawling the last six yards on hands and knees over the raised blue end line.
“It never occurred to me that I might not finish,” she says.
Her will exploded via YouTube, going universal and inspiring viewers from earthquake-shaken Japan to East Rutherford, where Coughlin prepared for his team’s season during the lockout. Ed Triggs, the Giants’ assistant video director, watched a segment on the story one Sunday in the offseason and recommended it to Coughlin. From Day 1, Coughlin implemented the season-long mentality of “Finish,” mandating that his players maintain momentum no matter the hurdles ahead. He showed the video to the team. Safety Antrel Rolle was filled with determination.
“I definitely remember,” Rolle says. “She just crawled over that line.”
Reynolds’ recovery commenced immediately. She finished in 20:15 — 37th of 169 competitors — the fifth and final team member to cross the line, and was scooped up by officials, led to an ambulance and hooked up to intravenous fluids. Paramedics determined that she had suffered slight hypothermia, wrapped her in a blanket and steadied her heart rate.
Teammates streamed in, tears falling down their faces. They wore sweatshirts that read “State Champions” and presented her with the medal as they passed the trophy around.
“I didn’t even remember running the race,” says Reynolds, who was unaware that the team would have won even without her finishing. “Then I got weepy.”
Her first conscious memory was an unusual request. She wanted chocolate milk. A teammate sprinted to the concession stand to retrieve a container.
“That’s my rebound drink of choice,” she says. “I was asking questions that I can’t even tell you why I did.”
Reynolds, 17, was unsettled by the experience. She struggled in the subsequent winter indoor season, running tentatively and taking few chances. Her confidence came back last September as she displayed her old aggressiveness and gambling spirit. The team, wearing bright pink Adidas branded with the word “Adios,” took home Tracy’s ninth state title. Reynolds finished sixth with a time of 18:51.
“I just wanted to finish on two feet and do what the team needed,” she says.
She had built reserves of energy, drawing motivation from Tracy’s trials with ALS.
During practices, Tracy, unsettled by the disease, began to fall more frequently, but the girls team insisted on buoying him with victories. It blazed through practice trails in the Presidio, an idyllic expanse of forest and airfield near the Golden Gate Bridge and Pacific Coast. Tracy brings a chair to workouts.
“We will have him as our coach as long as he wants,” athletic director Jim Ketcham says.
Reynolds transformed her pain into convincing prose last fall. In applying to colleges, she wrote her essay on the experience. She was accepted into Colgate, a member of the Patriot League, and plans to enroll in August, enlisting with the cross-country and track teams; she will run all seasons with the two-mile race (11:14 personal best) being her prime event.
“I know it’s cliché but never give up became everyday words,” she days.
Her mother, Robin, a professional photographer and runner who has completed nine marathons, including two in New York City, is currently training for the Boston Marathon, and chronicling her daughter and the coach, Tracy, for a documentary. The working title is “Running for Jim”, and she says all proceeds will go to charity.
The tale still has legs. Tracy was invited by Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll to speak at a clinic he put on in the area, and used the coach’s story as a teaching instrument. One day recently, Tracy, a 51-year-old lifelong bachelor, opened an envelope sent from a representative of Hamilton High in Sussex, Wisc. Enclosed was a note of support from runners who had lost their coach to ALS.
“It’s mind-boggling how far her story has reached,” Robin says. “When I heard about the Giants, I was like, ‘What? No way.’ “
Coughlin, meanwhile, keeps the uncut reel of her story handy. He showed it to his team again last week before departing for Super Bowl XLVI. His motivational tactic has cost Reynolds support back home, though. She is a San Francisco 49ers fan, and locals learned last week that the Giants gained confidence from the tape before eliminating the 49ers in overtime.
“I’m really flattered,” she says. “But classmates have been all over me about inspiring the wrong side. I will root for the Giants on Sunday. I just wish they hadn’t beat the 49ers.”
Ralph Vacchiano contributed reporting
