Cross Country
Katrina Wavering, who served as an assistant boys and girls cross country coach at Our Lady of Good Counsel High School for four seasons, was promoted to head coach in January 2023.
“We are very excited to elevate Katrina to the head coaching position,” Good Counsel Athletic Director Steve Howes said. “She served the program with distinction as an assistant, providing tremendous feedback to the student-athletes and serving as a terrific role model.”
Wavering replaces Rich Hiegel, who resigned after leading the cross country program for the past six years. She joined his staff and became an English literature teacher at the school in 2019.
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Katrina Wavering Bio Continued...
“I am confident Katrina will build on Coach Hiegel’s success,” Howes said. “In addition to her coaching ability, she is a distinguished teacher. In her new role, her presence on campus will greatly serve our cross country athletes.”
Wavering, who’s also a Falcons assistant outdoor track coach specializing in distance events, finished the 2022 Boston Marathon. She has a Level 1 coaching certification from the U.S. Track and Field Association.
“It was truly a joy to work with the boys and girls as a cross country assistant, and I’m looking forward to keep working with them,” Wavering said. “We’ve been on an upward trend the past few years. I’m going to do my best to see it continue.”
In 2021 and ’22, Wavering helped Hiegel lead the girls to a second-place finish in the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference championships. During that time, Leah Stephens developed into one of the nation’s top athletes.
Stephens, the No. 1-ranked cross country runner in Maryland the past three years, won the 2021 and ’22 WCAC and Maryland Private Schools championships. Sarah Siegle placed fifth and third, respectively.
At the 2022 Milestat.com Invitational in Mechanicsville, Va., Stephens ran the fastest time by a Maryland girl (16:54 in the 5K) since at least 2000. She holds six school records in cross country and track and earned a full scholarship to Florida State University.
Stephens was selected first-team All-Met by The Washington Post in 2021. This past season, she was named Girls Cross Country Player of the Year. Gatorade honored her as the top female cross country runner in Maryland, and USA Today recognized her as one of the Top 25 competitors in the nation.
Stephens was undefeated in five regular-season meets in 2022, including two against national competition. By placing sixth in the Northeast Regionals, she secured a trip to the Champs Sports National Cross Country Championships in San Diego. She finished seventh (17:37) in Southern California to earn second-team All-American honors.
In 2020, Stephens and Isabella Sauro competed in the RunningLane Cross Country National Championships in Huntsville, Ala.
Before Good Counsel
Wavering came to Good Counsel after a successful running career in high school and college. At Mount de Sales Academy in Catonsville, Md., from 2011-15, she competed three years in cross country and four in indoor and outdoor track.
As a senior, she was team MVP in cross country and outdoor track. That same year, in the Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland championships, she placed second in the 800-meter outdoors and 1,600m indoors.
Competing under her maiden name, Katrina Hrabinski, Wavering’s 4x800m relay team set indoor (9:21.70) and outdoor (9:26.74) school records, the latter of which still stands. The indoor mark was set when the girls finished fourth at the 2014 Millrose Games in New York City. The team also participated in the New Balance Nationals and Penn Relays.
Jessica Harris, one of Wavering’s teammates, was an All-American at Notre Dame and ran professionally.
After graduating from Mount de Sales in 2015, the Baltimore Road Runners awarded Wavering a partial scholarship to attend the University of Maryland. She competed four years for Maryland Club Running, the Terrapins’ club cross country and outdoor track teams. She ran in several National Intercollegiate Running Club Association regional and national cross country meets. Some track and field events included NCAA Division I and III schools.
While at UMD, she also worked as a student tutor in the university’s writing center and a student assistant in the career center. At the Maryland Catholic Student Center, she was a communications intern and led a weekly Bible study. During the summer of 2016, she was a residence supervisor for more than 300 international students at the Emerald Cultural Institute in Dublin, Ireland.
Wavering graduated from Maryland in 2019 with a double major in English language and literature and secondary English education.
Wavering was born in Silver Spring, Md., and grew up in Crofton, Md. She and her husband, Jack, live in Silver Spring. Jack graduated from Good Counsel in 2016 and won two WCAC cross country championships. He competed at Maryland and Virginia Tech.