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stephanie baliga
Organizes Charity Running Team While Aiming for Olympic Trials By Myles Dannhausen
W
hen university of Illinois track and cross country runner Stephanie Baliga broke her foot during her sophomore year, she was devastated and lost. “up until that point, track had dominated my life. It was my complete identity,” Baliga says. “I defined myself as a runner.”
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She had reason to. as a freshman at Illinois, Baliga was among the fastest freshmen in the nation and an up-and-coming star for the program. She pursued running with a single-mindedness that, in retrospect, she says was not particularly healthy. But a broken metatarsal bone forced her from the starting line into weeks of self-questioning.