OSSIAN – Stephanie Bussey’s first cross country meet wasn’t quite as successful as her first beauty pageant, which got her the title of 2009 Miss Wells County.
“I had always wanted to try a pageant, because I always thought they looked like a lot of fun, and I never really liked being in the spotlight, so I decided to try something a bit more outgoing so I would be able to say I had done something like that, and it turned out to be that I won,” she said. “And I get to experience a year of being a queen.
“I had no idea (I would win). I am really, really glad I did it.”
The Norwell senior is running cross country for the first time after years of club swimming in the fall. Bussey has a personal-best time in cross country of 21:33 but didn’t win her first meet at the DeKalb Invitational on Aug. 17.
Just like trying something new with the pageant, Bussey also was ready for a change and gave cross country a chance this fall.
“I had been swimming most of my life, and since it was my last year of high school, I wanted to try something I hadn’t done before,” she said. “I had always run on my own, so I decided to go out for the team.
“It is definitely a whole different sport than swimming. I think racing is so hard. My coach keeps telling me it is so much a mental game, and that is like swimming but I am more prepared for swimming than I am to run a race as hard as I can for three miles.”
Norwell girls cross country coach Bob Dahl had tried to recruit Bussey for the cross country team in middle school, but to no avail.
“To say that I was surprised that she wanted to come out for cross country as a senior would be a mild understatement,” Dahl said. “She was on my radar in middle school but when she didn’t come out as a freshman or a sophomore, I just assumed she was not interested. Sometimes, I love being wrong.”
Dahl said despite her inexperience, Bussey brings a lot to the Knights.
“She is a great kid to have on our team,” Dahl said. “She is a hard worker and pushes herself very hard in practice. Besides the obvious differences to swimming, one of the things that has been the most difficult for her to adjust to is the concentration required to race for 20-plus minutes.
“I look for her to break through the barrier in the next two to three weeks. I fully expect that she will be finishing races with my front three by the end of the season. She does a great job of staying with them through the 2-mile mark in our races, so far.”
Bussey isn’t a stereotypical beauty queen.
She isn’t planning on making a career out of pageants and most of her competing has been in a swimming pool, not on a stage. That part of her life probably ended last summer at the 2009 Indiana State Fair pageant, where she finished outside of the top 10.
“I might change my mind in the future because I enjoyed doing it, and it was so much fun,” she said of competing in future pageants.
“I could do Miss Teen Indiana or something like that, but you need a talent, and I don’t have a talent you could bring onstage. I have to work on that.
“Some of the girls like to make a joke of it when I say something is really hard, and then they will say use your beauty queen attitude and be happy. They will pick on me a little bit, but just in a fun way. Nobody says anything mean. Everybody (at school) treats me pretty normal. They would say they had heard my name and ask if that’s what I did, and then ask if I will compete again. Because they think I have to defend my title and try to be queen every year, and they just don’t know that you can only do it once.”
