Sharon Dingman
Former Purdue volleyball star Sharon Dingman plans to fill the stands of her alma mater with family and friends wearing Hawkeye black and gold--and lead Iowa to victory as the new UI volleyball coach.

Ray Gilmore
Few seasons in Ray Gilmore's life compare to the spring of 1978--the year he attended his first Hawkeye baseball game.

Nile Kinnick Letters, February 1943
Nile Kinnick's letters to family and friends before he went to sea in 1943 capture life in New York City and Boston.

Jenny Spangler? Oh she’s just the nicest person you’ll ever meet. Friend and former Iowa track and cross-country teammate Ann Dobrowolski Flynn, 86BS, 90MAT, hesitates to use such a bland descriptive term but cannot deny, “Jenny is the nicest person I know. She has always been so supportive.”

Another former Iowa runner, Bev Boddicker Docherty, 81BS, 81SE, 83MA, immediately comes up with the same response about Spanger—sweet. Spangler’s coworkers say “nice.” People she coaches, fellow runners in the Lake Bluff/Lake Forest running group concur—really nice.

	Jenny Spangler's Midwestern "niceness" conceals a fierce competitiveness—and talent.

An elite marathoner calls on many qualities to hammer through 26.2 miles, muscles screaming, trembling with the kind of fatigue that makes a grown person want to cry, but nice is not one of them.

“I have heard people say I’m nice, and I am. Except when I’m running,” says the 5’3”, 105-pound mom/coach. “I guess I’m very competitive. It doesn’t matter whether it’s cards or basketball or running—I don’t like to lose. Not that I’ll play dirty or anything.”

Spangler’s white-hot combination of competitive spirit, raw talent, and genuine Midwestern nice have taken fellow runners and observers by surprise on numerous occasions. A classic example: qualifying for the 1996 women’s Olympic Trials Marathon with the 61st fastest time, she confounded the press and fellow runners by running away with the race in a personal best time of 2:29, which is still the fourth fastest time in that race’s history. Afterward, pre-race favorite and second-place finisher Linda Somers Smith came up and said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”

Spangler's first trip up the ladder of running success happened in 1983 while still an undergraduate and member of the track team at Iowa. (She graduated in 1986 with a degree in computer science.) Right off the bat, she mentioned her ambition to compete in a marathon to then track and cross-country coach, Jerry Hassard. As an impressionable teenager, she’d watched gaunt marathoners assemble and shuffle out of Rockford, Illinois and, some time later, bravely totter back in, staggering under the finish banner in the July heat. It seemed to Jenny like a heroic feat that a small human could actually accomplish. In fact, the scrawny and nice seemed to do quite well.

Initially, Coach Hassard told her she was too young yet for the kind of mileage a successful marathon requires. But after a good cross-country season in 1982, with an eye to the first women’s Olympic Marathon in 1984, athlete and coach worked out a plan to build on the training she was already doing for the 5,000 and 10,000 meters in track.

Ann Flynn remembers Spangler going out for another run after the team workouts. “I thought she was nuts. I remember thinking, ‘I’m never going to run a marathon.’” In yet another demonstration of “never say never,” Flynn, now a mother of two in Augusta, MI, not only ran a marathon but also qualified for the 2000 and 2004 Olympic Trials Marathons.

Spangler was a virtual unknown on the starting line of the 1983 Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth but attracted quite a bit of attention two hours and 33 minutes later when she became the new U.S. junior (19 and under) marathon record holder and race winner. “I had been shooting for 2:50, so Coach Hassard and I were quite surprised,” she laughs.

In a sequence of events that would repeat itself many times in her stellar career, Spangler got carried away by her own tremendous talent. “Coach Hassard and I decided to redshirt my junior track season to concentrate on the 1984 Olympic Trials Marathon in May. I realize now that was probably a mistake but I was excited—I was pretty highly ranked," she recalls. "I got a stress fracture from the higher mileage marathon training, did some cross-training, and ran the Trials anyway. Somewhere along the way, my foot actually broke and I had to slow way down. I had been in fifth place at the time.” She finished in 33rd place, with a time of 2:40, and was whisked from the finish line to the hospital in an ambulance.

Spangler perhaps never fully recovered and in the years following college, ran relentlessly. Plowing through injuries and logging upward of 90 miles a week with little time off, she barely managed to hold her body together through the 1988 Olympic Trials Marathon, where she placed a disappointing 49th.

“I guess you could say I have a passion for running. I’ve been doing it since I was 14. Running was my life," she says. "If I had a good run, then that was a good day. If my run went badly, then it was a bad day. Twice, I decided to retire from competitive running. I was burned out. I was not enjoying it and I didn’t want to feel that way about running.”

For 20 years, she wrestled with her consuming intensity for a sport that is touted to relieve stress. But, running was in her blood. First came a jog/social hour with friends. Then a fun run that really was fun. She married Miki Tosic in 1996 and had daughter Kelli in December 2001. Her life was full and happy and she began to think, You know what would make this really great…

“Having Miki and Kelli and our 16-year-old stepdaughter, Kristina, in my life, I’m more balanced and much more flexible. I can’t imagine running as many miles as I used to. I’ll even take a day off if I need to—I have to practice what I preach,” she laughs, referring to her advice to runners she coaches near her hometown of Lake Villa, Illinois.

In a sport where performances and careers are measured in minutes, four years out of competition was sufficient to make Spangler once again an unknown quantity when she toed the line of the Chicago Marathon in the fall of 2003. Her goal was to qualify for the 2004 Olympic Trials Marathon. The standard to best was 2:48. “I could tell she really wanted it. She really had that drive back again,” says Ann Flynn, who had come from Michigan just to cheer her on. Twenty years after setting the junior record, Spangler set the American master’s (40+ years) marathon record of 2:32. As far as stats fans can tell, she is the only person to simultaneously hold both the junior and master’s American records in an Olympic event.

In her fourth Olympic Trials appearance and only her ninth marathon ever, Spangler ran 2:36 for 10th place at the Olympic Trials Marathon on April 3rd in St. Louis. Fellow Iowa alums Ann Flynn and Bev Docherty were also among the 115 competitors that day. The top three places make up the U.S. Olympic Marathon team. “I’m happy with the 2:36, although I felt like I was in 2:30 shape,” says Spangler as daughter Kelli babbles in the background. “My large cheering section really kept me going. I’m thrilled that I’m not injured. In fact, aside from some sore quads, I feel fantastic.”

Looking down the road, which appears to be losing some of its past rollercoaster features, Spangler hopes to be running the rest of her life. “Running has definitely enhanced the quality of my life. I’ve traveled places I would never have gone and met so many wonderful people,” she says.

Satisfied with her role as a wife and mom, her part-time coaching duties, and the local running group she trains with, Spangler could easily fool the casual observer into thinking she’s just another mom in a mini-van going home to bake some cookies. But she has unfinished business at the Chicago Marathon this fall. We’ll see about nice.