By Ben Larrison

The Daily Northwestern

Big things were going to happen this summer for Allison King.

She was taking biology at Harvard, “looking for an adventure” in the months before her junior year as a pre-med student at Northwestern. And perhaps more importantly, at least from a Wildcat fan’s perspective, King was preparing for her first season under new coach April Likhite.

Likhite’s gung-ho, no-nonsense approach found an instant advocate with King, arguably the Cats’ best runner in 2005 and 2006. Under the new direction and anxious to better her 52nd-place finish at the Big Ten championships – tops on the team – she returned home to Potomac, Md., at the end of July, ready to finish her summer training before returning to Evanston.

Instead, King awoke one morning to a mysterious malady that would sidetrack any running priorities: She had lost part of the hearing in her right ear.

“It just randomly started one day, ” King said. “And that’s why it was also so alarming. It wasn’t this gradual hearing loss, it was just like one day I woke up and it was there. So, hopefully, the fact that it started so suddenly, I’m hoping that it’ll stop just as suddenly.”

Displaced were the cross country aspirations of a top-25 finish in the conference championships, of qualifying for Nationals, of leading a young, ambitious Cats team out of the Big Ten cellar and into respectability. In their place were a glut of doctors visits, opinion after opinion and, eventually, minor surgery.

In the meantime, King tried to run through the uncertainty. With the hearing imbalance making her dizzy, which as she understated as “a little inconvenient for runners,” King struggled to reach her workout goals. After the surgery, she was forced to take some time off, further distancing her from an optimal fitness level.

Most critically, she was unable to participate in the preseason and NU’s first four races of the year.

“It’s been awful,” King said. “I’ve already missed so many meets, which I am really mad about, but what’s been the hardest part is that the team is so much more compact this year. They’re running together so well, and even from miles away, I could sense that the team unity has just skyrocketed.”

Stuck in Maryland while her teammates trained in Illinois, King did her best to keep up, speaking with Likhite on the phone “literally every day.” The first-year coach impressed King with her concern for the runner’s health and by not pressuring King to come back to the team before she was ready.

At this stage, it appears that time will be the end of this week, when King will at last return to practice, the source of her hearing ailment still a mystery. Though she will not be competing for the Cats today at the adidas Invitational in South Bend, Ind., King anticipates a return to racing on Oct. 12 at the Bradley Invitational.

King may not lead the team at the Big Tens for the second-straight year, but she does hope to be racing alongside Celia Franklin and Carly Brown, who have emerged as NU’s top runners in King’s absence. Regardless of where she ranks on the team, the Cats know that with King’s arrival, they can reach their potential at last.

“We have a meet, and we walk away and we think, ‘Where would Allison fit into this?'” Likhite said. “And it’s going to be a huge benefit to have her back.”

Reach Ben Larrison at [email protected].