FALL RIVER – It all adds up.
Maggie O’Connell enjoys running. She has the talent. She enjoys competing. She’s an eager learner. And heck, she even enjoys the training.
Perhaps you noticed her name online or in this newspaper’s print edition early this month. O’Connell was the third female finisher and placed 32nd overall (697 finishers) in the Thomas Giunta Memorial 5K Road Race in Industrial Park. If you looked closely, you saw her time for the 3.1 miles was 21:16, which averages 6:50 per mile. An even closer look revealed perhaps the most interesting number.
Age: 11.
The 2018 Giunta female winner (18:59) is 28 years old, the runnerup (19:57) is 34.
Having finished third (22:02) last year, too, O’Connell said her primary goal this year was not to run a specific time or better, but rather win a friendly personal duel. “My cousin did it this year,” she said. “I just wanted to beat my cousin.”
With a strong kick, O’Connell defeated her 19-year-old cousin, William Rose, by three seconds.
A GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) sixth-grade student at Kuss Middle School, O’Connell is a member of this spring’s school track and field program. The program has almost 80 students signed up, a fact which should bode well for track and field’s future at Durfee High School, where participation numbers are low.
The 5-foot-4 O’Connell anticipates competing in the mile and the long jump this spring. She was, by far, Greater Fall River’s middle school cross-country champion last fall, going undefeated and posting a best 1.5-mile course time of 9:35.81.
O’Connell also plays on travel soccer and basketball teams. In the fall at Kuss, cross country was actually her No. 2 sport behind soccer. More than once, her mother Kara O’Connell said, Maggie played a soccer game, changed shoes, and jumped into a cross country race.
O’Connell is already veteran of running and racing. She got her start at the Silvia Elementary School when her second-grade teacher Susan Darmody started a running club. O’Connell immediately embraced it. “She surprised me one day when she said, ‘Mom, I want to run with you,’” Kara said. “Our house is exactly 1.3 miles from Silvia School and she started getting me up early to run to school. Of course, I had to carry her backpack.”
O’Connell’s mother has been both coach and sports psychologist, helping her daughter to control her nerves before the start of a match and convincing her that she can keep going strong when the lungs start to burn. “My mom told me to always be in your head, ‘C’mon, Maggie, you can do this. Talk to yourself with positive attitude.’ So I just do that and it helps me to go faster,” O’Connell said.
Though in elementary school last year, O’Connell was allowed to participate for Kuss (she could not figure in the scoring) in the city middle school races and she posted the city’s best female time of 6:11, beating most of the boys, too. That time would rate first place at many high school track and field meets.
O’Connell’s goal is to run less six minutes this spring.
“She has this in her drive,” Kara O’Connell said, “to excel at such an individual sport.”
While road racing times are generally faster than cross-country times, it’s still interesting to compare Maggie’s recent 5K time to the 5Ks run in high school league cross country championships in which Greater Fall River Schools competed last fall.
O’Connell’s 21:16 would have placed her third at the Mayflower Athletic Conference Championships, sixth at the South Coast Conference Championships, and 11th at the Eastern Athletic Conference Championships. It would have been good for sixth place at the Eastern Massachusetts Division 6 Championships.
“I think she’s fantastic,” said Caitlin Durand, co-head coach for track and field at Kuss. “She really, really has the right attitude. She’s such a good, good kid. She’s much more advanced than other kids on the team, but she’s just so humble about it. She doesn’t see herself as anyone special.”
Email Greg Sullivan at gsullivan@heraldnews.com. Follow him @GregSullivanHN.