Vince Moeglin is a Junior at Hudson. On Oct. 1, he ran a PR of 16:36.00 in winning the Pickerington North Panther Invitational. He followed that up with a 16:41.10, placing 11th in the Stow Invitational. He won his conference championship the following weekend in 
17:02.51. He ran 3rd for the Hudson team in the NE Districts, as they place 3rd, one point behind Solon. He ran 3rd again for his team as they placed 2nd in the Youngstown Regionals, this time besting Solon by 4 points. His expectations for State and for his team were very high. He didn’t run well at State, finishing 118th. His team dropped to 13th, while the Solon team placed 5th. Vince was diagnosed a few days after the State meet with mononucleosis.
I was recently sent an e-mail from Vince’s father in regards to our article “Impressions of the 2011 Ohio State Cross Country Championships”. He referenced a comment in the article about the memory of a single shoe left on the course.
“Another is of a single shoe on the course after all of the runners in one race came past the Mile. I thought, “someone is running with one shoe.” This is not track. They will have to cross over this gravel road. They will have to run through the woods. The whole run to the finish is crushed stone. I don’t remember seeing anyone walking or quitting. I don’t know who that individual was, but they ran the last 2.1 miles with only one shoe. It was State and they weren’t quitting.”
In his e-mail, he attached an article dated November 20th by Frank Aceto, an Associate Sports Editor for the HudsonHubTimes.com. In the article, Vince’s coach, Rod O’Donnell was quoted:
“After he won the Valley Division race, I thought he had a good shot of making it on the podium [at the state meet],” O’Donnell said. “He didn’t have a really good day at the district meet and the regional was really muddy. And then his shoe came off at the mile mark at the state meet. And sure enough, we found out he had mono.”
Moeglin knew something was wrong. But nothing was going to stop him from running.
“I didn’t want to drop out even though I wasn’t doing as well,” Moeglin said. “I just couldn’t let the rest of the team down.”
It seems the mystery of who lost their shoe is solved. That shoe was Vince Moeglins. He did run and finish the race with one shoe. He didn’t walk or quit. It was State. Vince, running with one shoe and with Mono, while he may have not performed as well as he wanted too or was capable of, he did not let his team down, and best of all, in his courageous run, he typified the athletes of Cross Country.