THE TEAM

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Running and Marie Davis Markham have been together  for a long time. For 34 years, from her early days as a youth athlete,  Marie has been in love with running and the running world. She started  competing at age 8 and remembers laughing through practices, and not  running much at all! Her youth coach, Alex Wright, worked with her  through high school, along with Lincoln Coach David Bailey, and the  remarkable Bob Williams. 

 Winning six state championship titles representing Lincoln HS, Marie was  also a three-time Foot Locker finalist, and a two-time Junior World  Cross Country team member. Attending the University of Oregon, she was  coached by the legendary Tom Heinonen, becoming a six-time All American.  After Oregon, she went semi-pro for the Nike Farm Team. An injury in  2004 closed her competitive running career, but Marie never stopped  running, and never stopped loving her sport. In 2017 Marie came back to  Lincoln High School as a volunteer coach, and her impact was immediate.  Her love of her sport and her love of her high school helped her bring  something special and different to the team. 

Late  summer, as a coach, she went to the Steens Running Camp and  participated in a girls only session on the challenges of being a female  distance runner led by former  teammate at Oregon, Melody Fairchild. She describes that Steens  experience as “life changing”. She developed “Girls Talk”  as a way to  help her girls talk about tough topics. She brought them to the Lincoln XC Girls Team, and amazing things began to happen.