Among the hazards on the National Christian College Athletic Association’s cross-country championship course: singletrack trail, forest, and deer.
On a loop through dense woods about a half-mile into the race—held in Houghton, New York, this past weekend—freshman Kayla Casaletto, from Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio, saw bushes and trees shaking next to the course, according to the Dayton Daily News.
“There were these loud, like, crunching noises,” she said in the article. “We were thinking, what is that? Then this deer just blazes out of the forest and I had no time to think. It ran straight into my legs and knocked me over.”
The deer was only about three feet tall, according to the article. “It was a pretty young one. I would have been in a lot more pain if it had been a buck,” she said.
Casaletto told the Dayton Daily News that she laughed off the encounter as fellow teammates and competitors asked if she was okay. She popped up and finished the 5K in 18:41, enough to score points and finish fourth in her team’s lineup.
The Cedarville men’s and women’s teams both won championship titles. They celebrated by singing “Kayla Got Ran Over by a Reindeer” on the bus ride after the meet.
Kit has been a health, fitness, and running journalist for the past five years. His work has taken him across the country, from Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, to cover the 2016 Olympic Trials to the top of Mt. Katahdin in Maine to cover Scott Jurek’s record-breaking Appalachian Trail thru-hike in 2015.
