After completing her senior year at Northmor, Julia Kanagy will continue to run cross country while attending Mount Vernon Nazarene University.
Kanagy will major in biology pre-med with the ultimate goal of becoming a pediatrician. While she had other colleges on her radar, she said that MVNU offered the sort of experience she is looking for.
“Just the Christian atmosphere,” she said. “To have my college career surrounded by people who want to grow their faith. I think I’ve known (I would attend MVNU) since I visited the campus in February. I visited Ohio Northern and applied to Findlay, but decided Mount Vernon was where I wanted to go.”
Currently, Kanagy is planning to only run cross country and hasn’t made a decision on track and field. However, she said she was grateful for her senior year of track at Northmor, especially after missing out on her junior year after the COVID-19 pandemic led to the cancellation of the 2020 spring sports season.
“It felt like last year, there wasn’t any closure,” she said. “I didn’t feel I did as well as I could in cross country, so that made me want to focus more on track.”
After feeling she could have had better results in cross country, Kanagy is looking forward to the potential to improve throughout her years in college.
“Just improving overall as a runner,” she said. “The coach has told me I could run 19 minutes if I try and I’d like to see it. Just being surrounded by people more disciplined about the sport instead of in high school, where anyone who wants to run can run.”
When thinking about Mount Vernon Nazarene, Kanagy is looking forward to a lot of things.
“Probably the freedom in school, meeting new people and coming into a new arena of competition,” she said. “I’m sure it’s way more difficult than high school.”
When looking back at her time in high school, Kanagy is most proud of her team’s cross country success — especially since her girls’ team didn’t always have big numbers.
“Probably the two times we went to state,” she said. “We went to state with a team of eight girls, which is one of my proudest moments. Just the atmosphere we created on the cross country team.”
