Transformation: Mountain Brook’s Benton Has New Outlook on Running Cross-Country

In her first race of the season, Lucy Benton set a personal record with a time of 11:49.28 to win the Warrior 2-mile Invitational in Alabaster.

By Rubin E. Grant

Lucy Benton had a spiritual awakening during the summer.

She had viewed herself as mainly a track runner with cross-country mostly an afterthought. So, she was putting a lot of pressure on herself to succeed in track and in the classroom.

But by the end of her junior year at Mountain Brook High School, Benton was an emotional mess and nearing burnout.

“I was stressed out,” she said. “What I was doing wasn’t working. So, I turned to my faith and over the summer everything transformed. I changed the way I was thinking about running and life.”

Benton, a Catholic who attends Our Lady of Sorrows, changed her outlook about cross-country, deciding to take the sport more seriously.

With her newfound perspective, Benton roared out of the gate to start her senior year of cross-country. In her first race of the season, she set a personal record with a time of 11:49.28 to win the Warrior 2-mile Invitational in Alabaster.

She followed that up by clocking a personal-best 18:24.54 to win the Chickasaw Trails Invitational, one of the state’s most competitive early-season cross-country meets, at Oakville Indian Mounds Park. She won the race by about seven seconds.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” Benton said. “It’s good for me to not just see myself as a track runner first, but to see I can also be good at cross-country.”

Benton didn’t fare as well last Saturday in the Trinity/Valkyrie Invitational at Tom Sawyer State Park in Louisville, Kentucky. She finished 63rd in the girls 5K run with a time of 19:50.90. 

Senior Mary Katherine Malone was the Spartans’ top runner, finishing 17th in a time of 18:43.30. Kennedy Hamilton was 26th, clocking 19:04.80. The Spartans finished third as a team with 211 points. Hillard Davidson from Ohio won with 64 points and Dupont Manual from Louisville was second with 114 points.

Despite her showing in Kentucky, Benton has shown she’s ready to take the mantle as the Spartans’ top distance runner this year, now that Reagan Riley has graduated and is at Notre Dame. Riley won the past two Class 6A girls state cross-country individual titles among a plethora of other crowns.

“We’re close friends,” Benton said. “If Reagan was here, I’d still be in her shadow. We FaceTime all the time. She’s very ecstatic about college.”

Benton plans to run in college. She likes Baylor and the University of North Carolina but hasn’t decided where she wants to go yet. She plans to study either architecture or dentistry.

“I have always loved art and drawing and looking at things aesthetically,” Benton said. “I am also interested in medicine, but I don’t want to be a doctor, so dentistry is kind of in the middle.” 

Random Start

Benton became a runner almost randomly. When she was in elementary school, Mountain Brook restarted its elementary school track meet after it had been dormant for several years. 

Benton decided she was interested but wasn’t sure what event to enter. She talked with her physical education teacher about it, and it was suggested that she run the mile since so few students were entered.

“All the grades were involved in the other events and there were only six in the mile,” Benton recalled. “I finished in 6:10 or 6:20, and M.K. Malone was the only one who beat me.

“So I quit soccer and joined the cross-country team.”

Until this school year, Benton had made her mark in track. In the spring, she finished as runner-up to Riley in the 1,600-meter run with a time of 4:57.10 and claimed silver in the 800 meters, clocking 2:12.19. She finished fourth in the 400 meters with a time of 59.44.

Benton describes herself as a very disciplined and very driven runner.

“Coming into a race, I have a very good idea how I want to run,” she said. “I try not to take it too seriously, but I’m not joking around, either. I try to be upbeat and realize it’s a blessing for me to run.”

Benton finished 20th in the 2022 Class 6A state cross-country meet with a time of 20:10.19.

“I wasn’t in a good place mentally last year, but now I’m looking to the Lord for help,” she said. “Now, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.”

The Spartans captured the team Class 6A cross-country title last year and added state titles in indoor and outdoor track and field to complete the triple crown.

“It’s a goal of ours to do it again,” Benton said. “There’s a good possibility we can do it. We lost some good athletes, but we have some other people stepping up.”