Emily Oren is a senior from Holland, Michigan, majoring in economics. She is one of the most decorated athletes in Hillsdale history, having won seven national championships across indoor and outdoor track and field.
What are your plans for after you graduate? What’s next for you?
Running-wise, I have two meets coming up and then the championship season starts, and then after that I’ll have nationals over memorial day weekend and then the post-collegiate season. It seems like it’s wrapping up quickly but it seems like it’s just started because I’ve only run one race so far. And then I graduate and I have a job lined up as an admissions counselor.
What’s the five-year plan?
I would love to keep running. I’m going to stay here and train with Coach Joe, which is cool. I’m trying to qualify for the Olympic trials this summer, so I have to go one second faster than I did last year and six seconds faster than I did this season so far, and realistically I’m not looking to Rio this year. I’m looking to place well and get a good sponsorship out of it, hopefully, so that can fund my running for the next five years. And hopefully — it’s so far down the road, you don’t know — I’m hoping to keep progressing as a runner and have a shot at one of the top three spots at the Olympic Trials four years from now.
What does a professional running career look like?
I don’t really know, actually. I’m still trying to figure that all out. It’s hard because as a collegiate athlete you can’t talk to people about it. I can’t talk to sponsors. I know that there is a running group that’s interested. You can go to different professional running groups, but I’m trying to stay here. So, it just depends on what kind of experience you’re looking for, I think. You can get sponsorships from different kinds of shoe companies that send you gear, and you just run for them or they sometimes pay you to do it. Or you can go to a running group, which I don’t really want to do unless there’s a group out in Portland, Oregon. There are really good groups out there, so if one of them asked me, I’d say, ‘Oh, Ok.’ So, hopefully for me, what I am hoping to happen is that I get some sort of sponsorship that I can use to stay here for the next few years and train with my same coach and after that see where I am: Is the running thing still working out? Should I move to a training group? Should I just call it quits? It’s really up in the air, because I don’t know what it looks like.
What are you looking forward to about living in Hillsdale next year?
Well, my sister is still here, so I get to be with her. I’m excited to still be training with the team and with my coach, and I’m really excited for the opportunity to work for the school, because I love the school and I think the job is going to be really interesting and really fun.
Has the nostalgia hit you hard yet?
Not yet. I mean, it kind of did at the awards banquet. We had a track senior awards banquet and I had to give a speech and I cried my way through it. So it has hit a little bit, but I’m not sure when it is going to set in. It’s going to be interesting.