Cross-country runner was ready to spread her wings

After being sidelined with an injury for the start of her first cross-country running season at Minnesota State University, Mankato, Catherine Delwiche, one of the top high school runners in Minnesota, finally got the doctor's OK to run again.

"She was thrilled," said her father, Jeff Delwiche.

She was doing everything right as she began a training run Tuesday, gliding easily down the sidewalk along Warren Street in Mankato, when a car crossed several lanes of traffic and jumped the curb.

Delwiche, 18, was killed, and her teammate, Laura Palmer, also 18, who was riding her bike alongside, suffered minor injuries.

"I have so many thoughts right now," her father said quietly over the phone Wednesday from the family home in Glencoe, Minn. And then there was silence. "Thoughts like maybe I wish I never started her running. ... She's given us so much joy. But I don't know if the joy outweighs this pain. It's indescribable."

Jeff Delwiche, a former Hopkins high school athlete, began running with his daughter when she was 10, maybe 11, he said. She ran nearly every day, rain, snow or shine. When she wasn't training with her high school team, she was running side by side with Jeff.

Caty Delwiche was on the high school varsity squad by the time she was in seventh grade. She finished 11th at the state cross-country meet her junior year and wanted to finish in the top 10 her senior year, her father said.

"We thought she was healthy when she went off to college," Jeff Delwiche said. But knots in her calf kept her from training with her college team -- until Tuesday.

"The car may have hit her head on," Delwiche said. "She likely saw what was happening."

No alcohol detected

According to early reports from the State Patrol, Dale Hoechst, 57, of Mankato, was driving south along Warren Street near the campus when he lost control of his vehicle and struck the two girls before hitting a phone junction box and a tree. Investigators said no alchohol was detected.

Both Hoechst and Palmer had been discharged from Immanuel St. Joseph's Hospital by Wednesday afternoon, according to hospital officials.

"She had a wind underneath her sails," said Brent Bohn, a former youth pastor who knew Delwiche for 4½ years. "She was full of hope. She had fire and she had zeal."

Letting go of pressures

She had been excited about leaving for college and talked about being a nurse. "She was ready to spread her wings," her father said. And she was ready to let go of some of the pressure she put on herself to be a top high school student and athlete.

On Sunday, she told her father that she had found her first boyfriend.

And then the accident that took everyone's breath away.

Delwiche always had been quiet, somewhat shy. "Until you got her to open up," Tankersley said. Delwiche was one of the 2007 class valedictorians at Glencoe-Silver Lake High School.

"She was the one person who could keep a secret," Tankersley said. "And she was one of the few people you cared what she thought. She had such high standards."

She was the girl who loved to paint her fingernails yellow one day and purple then next. She loved baking chocolate chip cookies and watching a Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp movie with her friends. She was devoted to her church -- Riverside Assembly of God in Hutchinson -- and went on mission trips to Mexico with her dad, a former pastor.

And, of course, she loved to run.

Running great Steve Prefontaine was her hero. "She made us watch his biography," Tankersley said. "I was bored out of my mind, but she was really into it."She was all-conference for six years," said Scott Eckhoff, her high school running coach. "I've coached for 25 years and you get maybe one or two athletes like Caty in your career."

Jen Blue, the women's cross country coach at Mankato, said Delwiche had the ability to be an All-American runner.

The question of why

Team members will pay tribute to her at their home meet on Saturday, the day after her funeral.

Kenny Fillbrandt, a Glencoe-Silver Lake High School senior and former teammate, is trying to figure out how this could happen.

"When I heard the news, I ran to the track where I first met her and where she taught me to run on pace," he said. "I sat there crying. ... Why her? She was doing something she loved. ...They say there's a reason for everything. But I don't know the reason for this."