It’s the opening night of the 2024 NAIA track and field championships, and one of the greatest athletes in the history of The Master’s University isn’t on her way to another victory. Hannah Fredericks is simply trying to survive.
The junior’s elbow is fractured, the result of a fall two weeks prior, and although there’s no cast, she can’t hide the pain or the training she missed.
She swings her left arm awkwardly back and forth, plodding along, gasping for air. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s less than halfway through a 10,000-meter race she’ll never finish, and, frankly, it doesn’t matter. This will go down as a shining moment in the history of TMU’s athletic department, where becoming a legend requires far more than trophies and record times.
Five years ago, Fredericks might not have been ready to honor Christ in this moment. That was before the tragedy at her high school, the strange ending to her prep running career, and a thorough education in what it means to be a Christian athlete.
Hannah’s parents, Mike (’98) and Amy (’99), met at what was then The Master’s College. Photo by Mark Finster.
In three years at TMU, Fredericks has rewritten the school’s cross country and track and field record books.
She’s a nine-time Golden State Athletic Conference (GSAC) individual champion, a 10-time NAIA All-American, and a two-time national champion.
Her best times as a Mustang suggest she would thrive in NCAA Division 1.
It’s been an exciting ride, but Mike (’98) and Amy (’99) Fredericks, who met at what was then The Master’s College, hadn’t envisioned even a college scholarship when Hannah first began running. The impetus for her career was purely practical.
Mike and Amy had five children, of which Hannah is the second, and they wanted to avoid taxiing them to disparate activities across the Santa Clarita Valley. So, they signed up for a local track club, where youngsters of all ages gathered to run an array of distances — all, most importantly, at the same time and location.
The plan hit one minor snag: Hannah didn’t want to go. Seven years old, she cried the first time Amy dropped her off, and in the years that followed, Hannah remembers a variation of the same conversation ensuing. She would ask her parents if she had to keep running. No, they would say. Hannah would still run.
Around middle school, something changed. Fredericks found that she thrived on pushing her physical limits. She was disciplined and hardworking, hungry to traverse rolling hills and tree-lined paths in search of victory. The once-reluctant runner was becoming a gritty competitor.
The desire to excel only increased at Saugus High, renowned for its prowess in distance running. From 2006 to 2015, the school won 10 state cross country titles, nine on the girls side, and Fredericks was intent on becoming another great Centurion runner.
In hindsight, she sees that her identity was wrapped up in running; happiness rested on the outcome of the next competition, and success or failure was completely up to her. In the days leading up to a race, she’d stress over her eating, her workouts, the possibility of failure. On the starting line, she cried anxious tears and her body shook. She wanted to be somewhere else.
Fredericks hardly recognizes that girl anymore.
Fredericks is already a two-time NAIA national champion heading into her senior year at TMU. Photo by Mark Finster
On Nov. 14, 2019, Fredericks was in her first-period math class when a boy burst into the room. “There’s a shooter on campus!” he shouted.
Outside the window, Fredericks saw students running and screaming. Her teacher stacked desks against the door, handing out scissors in case the barricade failed. Sitting in the dark, Fredericks tried to comfort a classmate beside her, even as she worried about the whereabouts of her own brother, Jake, a freshman. She prayed he was safe.
Fredericks learned later that a 16-year-old Saugus student had entered campus that morning, opening fire with a .45-caliber handgun. Five students were hit, two of them tragically succumbing to their injuries. The shooter died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Hannah and Jake, physically unharmed, reunited later at Central Park, the rendezvous point for students and parents.
The tragedy made national headlines and sparked an outpouring of support for a shaken Saugus community.
Fredericks says she experienced in the following weeks — as the Centurions pressed on to the sectional and state cross country finals — how athletics could serve a greater purpose. When teammates had questions, she did her best to provide an answer for the hope within her.
“My parents reminded us that God is in control and He’s still good,” Fredericks says. “We thanked the Lord for safety and prayed for the families who lost people or were injured. But that day doesn’t define us. And we’re not crippled by fear because we have the hope of Christ.”
Fredericks’ approach to competition may not have changed overnight, but gradually she understood that her athletic performance wasn’t of ultimate importance. Maybe that’s why her 64th-place finish at the state championship on Nov. 30 (after taking third at sectionals the week before) didn’t rock her. Her team had performed well; that was enough.
The following year solidified her new way of thinking.
In March 2020, the William S. Hart District, which includes Saugus High, transitioned to online learning due to concerns about COVID-19. Eventually, the 2020 track season and the cross country schedule for the upcoming fall, during Fredericks’ senior year, were canceled.
She never attended another in-person class.
In a way, the drastic shift allowed Fredericks to step outside the hypnotizing rhythm of competition and reassess her priorities. She studied and spent extra time with her family. She continued to run, as many as 85 miles per week, but not under the pressure of an impending race.
In late 2020, an ankle injury forced her to rest for five weeks.
If online classes and race cancelations hadn’t convinced her that running could be taken away at any time, this setback did. Her hope couldn’t rest on something so fragile. More than that, she began to ask questions like Why do I compete? and Who is this for? In junior high, she’d given her life to Christ, but she sensed now that she hadn’t submitted athletics fully to Him.
When track season finally returned in spring 2021, Fredericks says she felt a new sense of joy during competition. She still experienced pre-race butterflies, but no crippling fear: She would do her best and trust the Lord with the outcome.
Fredericks is the only Lady Mustang in history to win two individual GSAC cross country championships.
The Santa Clarita Valley has long been a reliable source of elite running talent. Olympians Allyson Felix and Alysia Montano (Johnson) and U.S. champion Lauren Fleshman hail from the valley, as do countless collegiate standouts.
In fact, the two most-accomplished runners to arrive at TMU before Fredericks – Karis Crichton (Frankian) and John Gilbertson — are both from Santa Clarita. Crichton even attended Saugus High.
By the time Fredericks came on the scene, she was already on Zach Schroeder’s radar. She’d first met TMU’s longtime cross country and track and field head coach and his wife, Amie, when Fredericks was in elementary school. They all attended Placerita Baptist (now Bible) Church.
When Fredericks signed with TMU in 2021, it was because she loved the coaches and the program’s ethos: competing for an audience of one. In return, the Schroeders showed Fredericks how to worship Christ in every workout and race – even in how she ate and slept.
Fredericks was all in. As a freshman, she watched closely how team captain Arianna Boggess (Ghiorso) handled success and failure, and how Ghiorso led the team with “grace and elegance.”
Fredericks also met often with Amie Schroeder, talking about running and sanctification over coffee. One topic they dug into was pain: namely, Fredericks didn’t want to hurt when she ran. Amie explained that discomfort was an inextricable part of elite distance running.
Embracing that truth has been a key to Fredericks’ historic run, of which these are a few highlights:
She’s the only Lady Mustang to win two individual GSAC cross country titles.
In 2023, she led TMU women’s cross country to second place at nationals, matching the best finish of any team (in any sport) in TMU history.
In 2024, at indoor track nationals, she won the 3,000 meters and, a few hours later, ran the anchor leg for the distance medley relay (DMR) team, which also placed first.
These events typically end the same way, with Fredericks using an interview to proclaim the gospel, thank her coaches, or praise her teammates.
Heading into the 2024 outdoor track and field national championships, it looked as though she’d have another opportunity to honor Christ from atop the podium. Before the event, her best time in the 10,000 meters was more than a minute better than any other competitor. In other words, she was a heavy favorite.
Then everything seemed to fall apart.
Fredericks, left, and Ellen Palmgren are a formidable duo for TMU women’s cross country.
Two weeks before the NAIA championships in May, Fredericks fell during a run, landing awkwardly on her left arm. Her elbow smarted, but it wasn’t until later that stiffness set in and doctors told her she’d fractured a growth plate, necessitating a sling and possibly ending her season.
After a week and a half of restless inertia, she returned to the doctor with a question: Would she risk further injury by running? No, the doctor said, so Fredericks decided to try.
For roughly 15 laps in Marion, Indiana, on May 22, Fredericks was in familiar territory: near the front of the pack. In truth, the other runners didn’t know she was hurt, so they held back, fearing Fredericks would eventually find another gear and dash past them.
But Fredericks felt drained, her legs refusing to cooperate. Pain generally reserved for the back half of the grueling race arrived early. In the stands, Mike and Amy felt it too. “She’s never going to quit,” Amy remembers saying.
Schroeder agreed, and as the race’s pace increased, he mercifully waved Fredericks off the track. TMU’s program is built on ironclad trust between athlete and coach; Fredericks intended to keep running until Schroeder stopped her. At his signal, she exited the track and burst into bittersweet tears — sad not to finish, but relieved to be done.
“Hannah has the character of a champion,” Schroeder says. “She’s Christlike in all things.”
Afterward, Fredericks refused to sulk, spending the next two days vigorously cheering for her teammates. She felt that nationals had gone exactly according to plan — just not her plan, and that was perfectly okay.
Fredericks’ discipline extends beyond her athletic endeavors, making her not only an accomplished runner, but a first-class student.
An academic All-American in 2023, Fredericks is studying teacher education with the long-term goal of working with kindergarten or first-grade students. After graduation, she plans to enroll in TMU’s one-year teacher credential program.
Before then, she has unfinished business.
Entering her final year of athletic eligibility, she’s a contender to win individual national championships in cross country and track and field. But she rarely talks about herself; she’s more interested in discussing the Mustang women’s cross country team, a group capable of winning the first team national title in school history this November.
To do so, the Mustangs must remain relaxed and avoid heaping extra pressure on themselves. After last year, they won’t catch competitors off guard, and any number of things could go wrong.
But however the story plays out, Fredericks isn’t concerned. She trusts the Lord to write a perfect ending.
