Tops in her class
By any measure, no one at the 6A level— junior or senior — could keep up with Rahmaan
Junior Halena Rahmaan joined with her sister, senior captain Hannah Rahmaan, to lead Montgomery’s girls cross country team to the state meet for the first time in school history. Halena then captured the Class 6A individual championship with a time of 17 minutes, 16.30 seconds after finishing 109th last year while running sick, earning her the Chronicle’s AllGreater Houston Girls Cross Country Runner of the Year award.
Q: How did you get started in cross country?
A: I really got into distance running in high school because, at our school, it’s first period, and I wanted to be in the same first period as my sister (Hannah), so I was like, "I’m going to run.”
Q: What’s the toughest part about the sport?
A: The toughest part isn’t physical, it’s mental. It’s very hard when your legs are burning and you see a hill coming up, and you have to go up that hill to get to the finish … and you’re having trouble breathing because you’re so tired. You tell yourself to keep going, but it’s really difficult sometimes.
Q: What keeps you going then? What do you love most about cross country?
A: Most of the time, I’m motivated to get to the end to see how the race went. During the race, you don’t really know how it’s going. Sometimes, you have a good idea, but I really look forward to getting to the end and seeing where I am, what the time was and how I did. And then also, we always get to eat afterward, so I know once I cross the finish line there’s going to be some food.
Q: You finished 51st at state as a freshman and 109th last year. What was your goal going back to Round Rock?
A: I really had high hopes going into this race because I knew what I had done last year wasn’t exactly all I could have done. It wasn’t a good representation of how hard I was working that year. So I knew this year I’d been working hard over the summer and really progressing throughout the season, so I had a good chance of doing well there.
Q: What was the key to winning the race?
A: Just trusting in my training and trusting that my coach had us doing everything that we were supposed to be doing, and then knowing that I really had a chance at it, and just believing I could do it.
Q: What’s it like to be a state champion?
A: It’s awesome. It really hit me when I was talking to my coach. He was like, "Well, now nobody can take that away from you. You’re forever going to be a Texas state champion." And I was like, "Well, that’s cool." And then hearing everybody talk about it, it was like, "Wow, I actually did that.”
Q: You also won district and regional titles during a dominant postseason. How do you raise the bar next season as a senior?
A: I want to do it again. I have to try to be consistent with my running and consistently do well. It’s always a challenge each year, so I have to work hard. There are always new people coming up.