Brenda Saunders Stukey - Clarkstown South 1977
As a freshman at Clarkstown South, Brenda Saunders didn’t find her athletic calling right away. She was a respectable swimmer and field hockey player but her track career began haltingly when she attempted the hurdles and sprints. “I finished dead last,” she says now. “I was lousy.” Then she ran a mile time trial and clocked 7:11, not blazing time but fast enough to whet her appetite for distance running.
By the end of her sophomore year, with her track career blossoming, Brenda made the decision to drop the other two sports and focus entirely on running. It proved to be a prudent choice. In the mid-1970s, when organized girls’ sports were expanding, Brenda was one of the first Rockland girls to gain statewide recognition in track and cross country.
She finished fourth and third, respectively, in the 2-mile run at the first two New York State girls’ outdoor championships (1975 and 1976) and also placed third in the inaugural New York State girls’ cross-country championships, held in conjunction with the boys’ meet at Bear Mountain in 1976. Brenda held the County outdoor 2-mile record (11:07.3) for eight years, shared the County indoor 2-mile record (11:00.9) with Tappan Zee’s Lisette Hautau for 28 years, and held the record for the Bear Mountain 3-mile course (17:53.0) for 29 years. She also anchored the first Clarkstown South girls’ track team to a Section 9 championship.
The race that gave her event a stamp of legitimacy, however, was the invitational women’s two-mile at the 1977 Nanuet Relays, which at that time was the first major meet of the spring track season. Saunders established the County record at 11:07.3, competing against some of the state’s premier runners. “That race was a recognition of the fact that women’s distance running was on the rise and New York had some of the best talent in the country,” Brenda recalls, citing runners such as Kathy Mills of Fayetteville-Manlius and Diana Halpin of Monroe-Woodbury.
At the University of Missouri, where she earned a full athletic scholarship, Brenda twice won the Big Eight Conference 10,000-meter run championship and finished eighth in the Nationals her junior year. She posted outstanding personal-best times of 16:34 for 5,000 meters and 34:52 for 10,000.
“I never considered myself very athletic, just someone who had the desire to keep getting better,” says Brenda, who developed endurance through swimming at a young age. “The harder I worked, the better I got.” In a 1976 Journal-News article, Brenda’s mother, Mrs. Dallas Saunders, made reference to another trait that propelled her running career. “I think she was simply born with a great deal of drive. She’s been a competitor all her life.”
That drive manifested itself in Brenda’s willingness to run high mileage and submit to punishing workouts. Dick Weis, the Albertus Magnus coach at that time and Brenda’s coach at Missouri her last two years, invited Brenda to train with his boys’ team on occasion. Weis, along with Albertus assistant Jim Moran – a neighbor of the Saunderses – offered training advice to Brenda’s dad, John Saunders. Mr. Saunders acted as Brenda’s coach outside of the school seasons and brought her to AAU open meets in cross country and track. She competed for the Long Island Golden Spikes track club in non-scholastic events.
“Dick Weis was into high mileage,” remembers Brenda, a Clarkstown South High School Hall of Famer and member of the Rockland All-Century Cross Country team. “He said, ‘If a guy can do it, you can do it.’ By the end of my senior year [at South] I was running 60 to 70 miles a week.” Brenda, in turn, passed on the high-mileage gospel to teammates Marion O’Shea and Wendy Bohrson, and the trio benefited from doing workouts with the boys’ distance runners.
After graduating from Missouri in 1981 with a degree in fisheries and wildlife management and a minor in education, Brenda obtained her teaching certificate but then changed career plans and entered the nursing profession. She has been an operating room surgical nurse for close to 18 years [as of 2006], specializing for the past 13 years in eye surgery at a private center in Tulsa, Okla. Her husband, John, is a nurse manager for the Veterans Administration hospital in Tulsa. John, a former minister and a Teaneck, N.J., native, also starred as a distance runner, once finishing 17th in the Boston Marathon.
John and Brenda met at a race in Central Park, and both continue to run today. Brenda, in fact, excelled for several years in regional road races in Oklahoma, even dipping under 18 minutes for 5K at age 40. However, foot injuries, as well as surgeries resulting from being struck by a car while running, have slowed her in recent years. But I will never give up running,” she says, still possessed of an athlete’s mindset. “As long as I can do it, I will keep running. Not jogging, running.”
Brenda and John live in Broken Arrow, Okla., a Tulsa suburb, with their two children – Kirsten, 16, a high school sophomore, and Eric, 13, a seventh grader – both of whom have acquired their parents’ love of running.
By the end of her sophomore year, with her track career blossoming, Brenda made the decision to drop the other two sports and focus entirely on running. It proved to be a prudent choice. In the mid-1970s, when organized girls’ sports were expanding, Brenda was one of the first Rockland girls to gain statewide recognition in track and cross country.
She finished fourth and third, respectively, in the 2-mile run at the first two New York State girls’ outdoor championships (1975 and 1976) and also placed third in the inaugural New York State girls’ cross-country championships, held in conjunction with the boys’ meet at Bear Mountain in 1976. Brenda held the County outdoor 2-mile record (11:07.3) for eight years, shared the County indoor 2-mile record (11:00.9) with Tappan Zee’s Lisette Hautau for 28 years, and held the record for the Bear Mountain 3-mile course (17:53.0) for 29 years. She also anchored the first Clarkstown South girls’ track team to a Section 9 championship.
The race that gave her event a stamp of legitimacy, however, was the invitational women’s two-mile at the 1977 Nanuet Relays, which at that time was the first major meet of the spring track season. Saunders established the County record at 11:07.3, competing against some of the state’s premier runners. “That race was a recognition of the fact that women’s distance running was on the rise and New York had some of the best talent in the country,” Brenda recalls, citing runners such as Kathy Mills of Fayetteville-Manlius and Diana Halpin of Monroe-Woodbury.
At the University of Missouri, where she earned a full athletic scholarship, Brenda twice won the Big Eight Conference 10,000-meter run championship and finished eighth in the Nationals her junior year. She posted outstanding personal-best times of 16:34 for 5,000 meters and 34:52 for 10,000.
“I never considered myself very athletic, just someone who had the desire to keep getting better,” says Brenda, who developed endurance through swimming at a young age. “The harder I worked, the better I got.” In a 1976 Journal-News article, Brenda’s mother, Mrs. Dallas Saunders, made reference to another trait that propelled her running career. “I think she was simply born with a great deal of drive. She’s been a competitor all her life.”
That drive manifested itself in Brenda’s willingness to run high mileage and submit to punishing workouts. Dick Weis, the Albertus Magnus coach at that time and Brenda’s coach at Missouri her last two years, invited Brenda to train with his boys’ team on occasion. Weis, along with Albertus assistant Jim Moran – a neighbor of the Saunderses – offered training advice to Brenda’s dad, John Saunders. Mr. Saunders acted as Brenda’s coach outside of the school seasons and brought her to AAU open meets in cross country and track. She competed for the Long Island Golden Spikes track club in non-scholastic events.
“Dick Weis was into high mileage,” remembers Brenda, a Clarkstown South High School Hall of Famer and member of the Rockland All-Century Cross Country team. “He said, ‘If a guy can do it, you can do it.’ By the end of my senior year [at South] I was running 60 to 70 miles a week.” Brenda, in turn, passed on the high-mileage gospel to teammates Marion O’Shea and Wendy Bohrson, and the trio benefited from doing workouts with the boys’ distance runners.
After graduating from Missouri in 1981 with a degree in fisheries and wildlife management and a minor in education, Brenda obtained her teaching certificate but then changed career plans and entered the nursing profession. She has been an operating room surgical nurse for close to 18 years [as of 2006], specializing for the past 13 years in eye surgery at a private center in Tulsa, Okla. Her husband, John, is a nurse manager for the Veterans Administration hospital in Tulsa. John, a former minister and a Teaneck, N.J., native, also starred as a distance runner, once finishing 17th in the Boston Marathon.
John and Brenda met at a race in Central Park, and both continue to run today. Brenda, in fact, excelled for several years in regional road races in Oklahoma, even dipping under 18 minutes for 5K at age 40. However, foot injuries, as well as surgeries resulting from being struck by a car while running, have slowed her in recent years. But I will never give up running,” she says, still possessed of an athlete’s mindset. “As long as I can do it, I will keep running. Not jogging, running.”
Brenda and John live in Broken Arrow, Okla., a Tulsa suburb, with their two children – Kirsten, 16, a high school sophomore, and Eric, 13, a seventh grader – both of whom have acquired their parents’ love of running.