Little’s statement to her coach last year at this time followed the regional cross country race. Little hoped to qualify for the state meet that day. Instead, her time was more than a minute slower than her district time because her medical condition affected her performance that day. She suffers from Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS, for short), which affects blood flow.
“I get really lightheaded and nauseous,”Little said, “and my whole body just overheats.”
“It shuts her down to the point where she can’t even get up and move around,” said her mom, Tabitha Little. “She’ll just be immobile for a while. It happens two to three times a week. Sometimes it’s worse. It really just depends on what has gone on. Like if she’s had a bad run and she’s thrown up a lot, the next day she’s just not able to function. Her mind doesn’t work like it’s supposed to. She gets brain fog. She also suffers from tremors because of it.”
Little, a senior, doesn’t let POTS stop her from competing. She decided to tell her story now because she and her teammates are returning to the regional race this weekend. They will compete in the Division II meet at noon Saturday at Troy High School.
“I’m really excited,” Little said. “I think our team is going to run really well this weekend, and we’re hoping to qualify for state.”
Little finished 13th at the district meet last weekend at Cedarville University with a time of 19 minutes, 58.1 seconds. Northwestern finished sixth as a team to qualify for the regional meet for the second straight season.
Other finishers for the team were: senior Madison Lyday (36th place; 21:05.7); sophomore Alyssa Christian (39th, 21:17.1); junior Kayley Yontz (50th; 21:55.9); senior Natalie Boehmer (55th; 22:04.9); sophomore Kensie Hayes (65th; 22:41.9); and freshman Lauren Pollock (70th; 22:54.5).
“I’m super proud of them,” Whip said. “That was a goal they had: to make it to the regionals again. This is the exact same team that made it to regionals last year, and they all did not run well at regionals by any means. This year, we’re in a very competitive district, and the regional is not going to be any different. They’re only taking three teams out, and we’re ranked sixth in the district.
“What we want to do is just compete. We’ve been competing all year. That’s been our motto. Every race, do the best that you can do. We were very prepared for districts. We knew who our competitors would be, and each kid knew exactly which competitor they needed to compete with in order to make it out of the district. They all did their jobs.”
Whip knows how hard that is in each race for Little, who has been dealing with POTS since she started running in seventh grade. It wasn’t diagnosed until two years later when she was a freshman in 2018. It was difficult not knowing what was causing her problems, and even after the diagnosis, there are still many questions.
“She still has to go through a lot of tests,” Tabitha said. “They’re still trying to figure out what is the main thing that causes it. They don’t have a lot of information.”
The first indication that something was wrong came when Little started suffering what they thought were stomach issues during a race. They suspected an appendicitis. A doctor told them it wasn’t that. Then Little threw up six to nine times in one race. They knew it was something serious.
Through it all, Little has kept running.
“It has made me love running even more,” Little said, “because I appreciated the sport so much better. I’ve just had to work a lot harder and push my body a lot harder than a lot of the other people around me. I’ll run more mileage than a lot of people. I just try to push my body as hard as I can at practice, so that my body’s more used to doing such hard workouts.”
Little has improved her times ever year, Whip said. She ran 22:17 as a sophomore, the first year Whip coached her, and then 19:58 last season. Her best time this year is 19:55. She finished second at the Clark County championship in 21:02. Whip said Little would have ran in the 19:40s last weekend if her condition hadn’t made her throw up during the race.
“I think it frustrates her to know that this is happening to her,” Whip said. “She can get to a point where she can hold it and hold it and hold it because she knows it’s coming on, and then she can’t deal with it.”
Little usually feels the symptoms early in the race. She slows down to avoid throwing up. If she can control the symptoms, she picks the pace back up. It happens almost every race.
No one’s prouder of Little’s ability to fight through that adversity than her mom. Tabitha gets so nervous during races she stands behind her husband Charles.
“He takes all the pictures and does all the yelling,” Tabitha said. “I’m beyond proud. I have tried several times to get her to stop doing all of this just because it scares me to watch her. But I feel like that just makes her want to do it more. She wants to prove to everybody that this thing is not going to hold her back and she’s stronger than it is, and it is amazing.”
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