Spring 2002 - Haverford College

Ford Games
Haglund is likely to add to his NCAA titles in late May.
Carol Ann, who taught high-school
English for a while, decided to stay at
home to raise the five children: three boys
and two girls. The family moved to
Germany for a year when Haglund was
four years old. Then, about six months
after they returned to the States, the
Haglunds moved to Tennessee, where
they’ve lived ever since. Richard (who,
coincidentally, ran track at Wesleyan with
Paranya’s father, Stephen) is a physics professor
and chair of the department of
physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt
University.
“We had a very nerdy house,”
Haglund recalls with a laugh. “My friends
used to joke about it sometimes – I
remember one of my track buddies in
high school giving me a hard time when
my dad asked him if the ham at the athletic
banquet was ‘synthetic.’ It never
occurred to me that it was strange to say
‘synthetic’ instead of ‘fake.’ My dad would
have his colleagues and grad students over
for dinner and they would start talking
about stuff you couldn’t even understand.
The mother of one of my best friends is a
marine archeologist, so I had some friends
who were serious about school and were
in similar situations. My dad would come
home from work and ask us to spell hard
words and tell us about what was going
on in the office. There were always a lot
of books in our house and everyone read
a lot. We didn’t have a television for a
while. We often had some pretty intellectual
discussions over dinner.”
All of Haglund’s siblings ran track, but
none had long careers or notable success.
J.B. started running competitively in middle
school. It was a rocky beginning to a
running career, with Haglund coming in
second or third to last in most of his races
in 7th and 8th grade. “I was starting to
get a little better at the end of 8th grade,”
he says, “but I would rather have been
playing football. My parents wouldn’t let
me play, though, so running was the
option I pursued.”
In high school, Haglund found the
going tough again. He attended
Brentwood High School in suburban
Nashville, a public school of approximately
1,600 students. There were only
about a dozen runners on Haglund’s
freshman cross-country team. Over the
next two years, however, the team
improved and grew to nearly 50 runners.
Brentwood won its first-ever regional
championship during Haglund’s junior
year and repeated the feat the next year.
The team went to the state championships
both years, coming in 10th the
second year, Haglund’s senior year. “I was
the best distance runner in my high
school,” he says, “and I finished fifth in
the state my junior and senior years. We
did well at States in cross-country, but
most public schools in Tennessee don’t
finish that high. It’s mostly private schools
at the top. The state is not very deep as
far as distance running is concerned.
There are a few good guys, but it dropped
off quickly from the top. I wasn’t recruited
by anybody, anywhere.”
After high school graduation, Haglund
had his heart set on the U.S. Air Force
Academy and training to fly F-15s. The
dream was never realized when a routine
eye exam revealed that he had 20/25
vision in one eye. “I found out later that I
still could have pursued the Air Force,
that I wasn’t really disqualified,” he
explains, “but I was under the impression
that I was out. But at that point I started
my college search, very late and without a
clue as to what I wanted.” Haglund’s father
suggested small schools, since he’d
enjoyed his experience at Wesleyan. But it
was Haglund’s eldest sister, Kristine, who
played a pivotal role. Living in Ardmore
at the time, Kristine knew Haverford was
an outstanding college and when she saw
a newspaper story about Tom Donnelly
and the stellar track program at Haverford,
she knew J.B. would be a good fit. “It wasn’t
until late December of my senior year,”
Haglund recalls, “that I actually came up
for a visit. It was the last day of exams and
almost all of the students were gone. Tom
showed me around campus a little bit and
I ran with some guys from the team that
afternoon. I never really had an official
admission tour and I never visited any
other college except Haverford because I
was so late. Grinnell was my second
choice and Centre College in Kentucky
was kind of my safe school.”
Before he arrived at Haverford,
Haglund realized that he was stepping up
to a higher level of competition. He called
then-captain Chris Hood ’96 the summer
before freshman year, hoping to get a sense
of the team and where he would fit in. “I
had the impression that they had Karl
8 Haverford Magazine