The family is ready for a vacation. Lunch is packed, the luggage is loaded, and the children are buckled up.
The only problem is stopping the 10 and 13-year-old brothers in the backseat from beating each other senseless along the way.
Wendy Ragle, the women’s cross country team’s 22-year-old leading lady, knows all about that scenario.
“Year after year on our family vacations, I had to sit between my brothers, and I would have to separate them,” Ragle said. “It makes you kind of tough.”
Shane Ragle, 20, and Shawn Ragle, 23, had other affects on sister Wendy. The 5-6 distance runner said her brothers not only made her tough, but also influenced her to become an athlete.
Shawn played football, softball and ran track in high school. He also played rugby for four years while in the marines.
Shane plays club golf at the University of Texas. Ragle said both of her parents were athletes in high school as well.
Ragle played basketball while she was teammates with the WNBA’s Tamika Catchings, and she also played soccer and ran track and cross country in high school. She said she had to be as competitive as her brothers were.
“I wanted to be tough like them,” Ragle said. “If they did anything, I thought I could do it too.”
That attitude helped Ragle win four district championships in all four sports she played throughout high school.
After she had been offered soccer scholarships by Northwestern State University, North Texas and several other schools, the Duncanville, Texas, native chose to give up soccer and take her running act abroad.
“I played soccer so long — I decided to change, (though) most schools were recruiting me for soccer,” Ragle said.
From there, Ragle arrived in Memphis and has been running ever since.
In all but one cross-country meet, Ragle has placed first among Tiger runners.
Besides running circles around much of the competition, the manufacturing engineering major has also excelled in the classroom.
Ragle made the Commissioner’s Honor Roll in 2001 and 2002. In fall 2000, Ragle received the Tiger 30 Award for having one of the top 30 GPAs of Tiger athletes.
She said her dedication to the classroom started at Duncanville High where she was an Academic All-State team member her senior year.
“High school really prepared me well,” Ragle said. “I was focused. I had to be to play all the sports I played.”
Now Ragle is focusing on being a leader, though this year’s cross-country team isn’t faring as well as she would like. She said she likes being a model runner.
“It’s natural for me to have some type of leadership,” Ragle said. “I’ve been captain or co-captain every year.”
As co-captain this year, Ragle said her role has been diverse.
“Sometimes I’m my teammates’ best friend; sometimes they think I suck,” Ragle said. “When people want to skip out on a run or not hit the weights — I’m the enemy. When the race is over, I’m their best friend because they know they placed better than they would have.”
Hayley Futrell, the team’s other co-captain, assists in giving fellow teammates support this season. She said most of the problems stem from a few of last year’s runners choosing not to return to the team.
“A lot of people backed out at the last minute that would have been key people,” Futrell said. “We had to pull some sprinters to be on the team.”
With the adjustments made, the senior transfer from The University of Houston said rather than being tyrannical, she and Ragle try to keep the team’s spirit alive.
“(We) try to be positive and encouraging and be there for all the girls,” Futrell said. “It gets tough in competition and everyday practice.”
The team had to adjust to more than new runners. It also got a new coach.
Jonas Holdeman joined the program after being head track and field coach of the Sports Club program at The University of North Carolina. Though Ragle said former coach Stan Hollenbach was good, she would have liked Holdeman to have arrived at Memphis sooner.
“I wished it would have happened earlier,” Ragle said. “I benefited from the other coach in different ways, but I would have benefited more from (Holdeman). He can back up everything he says, whether it’s with journals or literature.”
Holdeman said he understands the team’s plight and thinks the team is faring well taking into account the way the season started.
“Basically we came in with three returners,” Holdeman said. “Everybody came in, in fairly rough shape.”
Holdeman said the returners weren’t given a summer work out plan, which threw things off. He said things have been fine since then, though.
“It’s really been a group effort,” he said. “I selected Wendy as captain and asked the team to select another captain to help me with team management stuff.”
Ragle said she likes her role as co-captain and being part of the team so much, she plans to stay around although she is a senior.
“I’m still going to run next semester as a graduate student,” she said. “I graduate in December.”
In the meantime Ragle will keep running and reminiscing on old times with her brothers via telephone.
“I talk to (Shane) about once a month,” Ragle said. “I’m really close to (Shawn). We talk once a week.” The team runs in the Texas A&M Invite Monday.
