Nick Walker / Scroll

There’s more to a sport than the team one plays for. Lauren Dalton, a junior from Bigfork, Mont., opted to leave Weber State University, an athletic scholarship and her twin sister to study in Rexburg and further pursue her running goals.

Lauren and her twin sister, Lesley, a junior at Weber State, have both been running cross country since junior high school. They ran side-by-side through junior high, high school and a year and a half of college at Weber State.

“It was always one of my dreams to run cross country in college,” Lauren said. However, she felt that she “just had to move on.”

Lauren wanted to pursue her lifelong goal of running a marathon before she turned 20 years old. However, the Weber State cross country team does not allow their runners to run marathons because it takes their bodies too long to recover. Lauren had a tough decision to make.

She eventually decided to leave the team and chase her dream. It didn’t come without pain and sacrifice—it cost her two toenails and three weeks of knee problems—but she did achieve her goal. Her first marathon was the Ogden Marathon. Since then she has run in the Top of Utah Marathon in Logan, Utah, and most recently in the St. George Marathon.

In the St. George Marathon, she finished in 2:58:46, setting a new personal record. She finished first out of the 295 women in her age group, and 23rd among all women in the race.

“The move to BYU–Idaho was hard at first. I missed the team atmosphere, but I found that here, too,” Lauren said. She is a coach of the cross country team here at BYU–I and still finds time to do her marathon training.

Lesley is still attending Weber State. Although her sister left, she is still running strong. “The best part is competing at the big meets to see where we are against everyone else,” she said. The last meet she went to she ran in a race with over 250 collegiate athletes. Weber State is currently 30th in the nation.

Lesley knows that Lauren made the best decision for her life. “We have been together for a long time. It’s a good change for both of us.”

Lauren agrees and feels that the change has helped her progress in her pursuits. “Once I was gone, we finally could excel because we weren’t worried about competing against each other constantly.”

Even the coaches at Weber State understood why she decided to pack up and come to Rexburg. “Even though they were surprised, they knew that it was best for her,” Lesley said.

Lauren will continue with her marathon training regimen and hopes to be employed as a teacher, seconding as a cross country coach.