Sims helps Longhorns win Texas Relays

04/07/02

From Staff and Wire Reports

AUSTIN , Texas -- Pascagoula 's Erin Sims won the 1,500 meters on Saturday as the Texas Longhorns captured the Texas Relays.

Her time of 4 minutes, 23.82 seconds, nearly a full second faster than SMU's Karin VanRooyen. She took the lead early into the second lap.

"At the start, I didn't want to take the lead. I wanted to see what everyone else did," Sims said. "Everyone made their move at the 500 mark. I went with it and wasn't going to let her go."

That time allowed Sims to provisionally qualify for the 1,500 meters at the NCAA Outdoor Meet in Baton Rouge , La. , on May 30-June 2.

With LSU poised to claim several titles after the preliminary rounds, the Longhorns stormed back to win three events Saturday and served warning they plan to be a force during the outdoor season.

Sims also anchored the winning distance medley relay team on Friday with a time of 11:25 .

05/04/02

Amazingly, Erin Sims' college career has exceeded the one she had in high school at Pascagoula.

Sims was to compete in Friday's Stanford Cardinal Invitational, running in the 1,500 meters against a field of other highly-ranked runners at the event in Palo Alto, Calif.

Sims is already provisionally qualified to run at the NCAA Championships after posting a winning time of 4:23.80 in the 1,500 at the Texas Relays earlier this season.

Sims repeated as UT's cross country MVP this season and was an All-Big 12 runner.

School officials made a point to note that they were most proud of how Sims' had brought recognition to the school via her academic achievements. She was given the Darrell K. Royal Endowed Presidential Scholarship after posting high marks in both academics and athletics.

She has been on the UT Commissioner's Honor Roll every semester she has been enrolled at UT, after graduating from Pascagoula High in 1999.

Her cumulative 3.87 grade point average is among the highest of all student-athletes at the school. Sims finished 7th overall in the 1,500 meters at last season's NCAA Championships and was seeking to automatically qualify for the NCAAs with a strong showing at the Stanford meet.

07/20/02

From Staff Reports

On a team that helps set the pace academically for all other schools nationwide, Erin Sims is one of the biggest impact players.

Sims, a distance runner at the University of Texas , was the only Lady Longhorn to be named an Academic All-American this past year.

Texas was one of 75 schools in the U.S. that had its cross country team post a cumulative grade point average of 3.25 or higher. Sims runs cross country and track at the school and was part of the Texas team that competed at the NCAA Championships.

Sims, a rising junior, had the 14th-best grade point average on the national Academic All-America team. There were 53 student-athletes named in the prestigious grouping, which combined a person's classroom ethic with their accomplishments in their respective areas of competition.

Sims majors in art history and will be the top returning distance runner at Texas this coming season. She carries a cumulative GPA of 3.88 since enrolling at Texas .

Athletic prowess has long been a staple feature of Sims' repertoire and grades have never been a negative aspect, either. Sims won state running titles at Pascagoula High and immediately made an impact after signing with Texas .

Her college classroom grades are helping anchor a Texas program that tallied a 3.42 team GPA this past academic year.

That mark ranks 28th among all Division I schools nationally.

Erin Sims is back on the fast track

PASCAGOULA -- Erin Sims has adopted a lifestyle of preservation, restoration and conservation since graduating from the University of Texas last May.

The former prep All-American distance runner took a bachelor's degree in 2003 then lived in Europe for 10 months before returning home. One of the chosen few prestigious Fulbright Scholars, she plans to go back to Europe and continue studies related to a masters degree in art preservation.

"I'll probably be moving to France in December," Sims said earlier this week. "I could either study for my masters here in the States or overseas. The Fulbright Scholar progam allows you to study pretty much whatever you propose and I've been lucky to be a part of that."

Sims was the Big 12 Conference's top scholar-athlete as a senior at Texas. She set state high school records in the 800 and 1,600 meters that still rank among the state's best all-time times and she is the most decorated female prep runner to come from PHS or the Coast.

"One of my biggest accomplishments was being the first prep female in Mississippi to run the mile in under five minutes," Sims said, referring to her junior year when she ran a 4:59 mile at a meet in Hattiesburg. "The state record times have to be run at the State Meet in Jackson and I never got that low there. Julia Cathcart of Starkville broke my state records a few years after I graduated."

Sims won gold medals in the 800 and 1,600 as a sophomore, junior and senior. She also took gold in the 800 as a freshman and is the only Mississippian to ever be invited to run at the prestigious Milrose Games in New York.

"I was able to pick between several really good college offers and Texas wound up being the best place," said Sims, a 1999 PHS graduate. "My dad did so much for me recruiting-wise that I never even knew about. He sent tapes of me competing and other information to schools, so when I finally ran a good race as a junior a lot of recruiters were already aware of me and they started coming to meets and talking to me.

"My parents (Larry and Kay Sims) were a big part of my high school time."

And while Erin Sims doesn't dwell on the past, when she ran on the big stage at Texas and in NCAA Championship meets, she nonetheless explores bygone days of a different sort.

"I really want to do more schoolwork with my college major of art preservation," said Sims, holder of a fine arts degree in art history. "I spent time helping do work on a big church (built in the 1600s) while I was in Munich, Germany and I want to do more of those types of things when I go to France and other places."

Sims was also part of a project that took place in Ukraine, excavating a Greek/Roman colony site while she lived on the shores of the Black Sea. She took note of how underdeveloped various European nations are, while others, like Turkey, appeared more forward-oriented.

"Turkey wants to become part of the EU (European Union) and be more of a participant in business and economic affairs over there," Sims said. "Some countries like East Germany still have rubble from World War II in a few spots. Other countries face more of a threat of civil war than anything else, since they have only recently come into their own.

"People in places like those Eastern Bloc countries and ones that comprised the former Soviet Union enjoy talking to Americans. Those people have been through so much and they like to talk to people (who've had an easier\or democratic way of life.)"

Sims says she worked hard in college, both with classwork and sports. Her former distance coach at Texas, John Hayes, is now the head cross country coach at Northern Arizona University.

"Erin is a great girl ... very intelligent," Hayes said by phone from North Carolina where his UNA team was competing this week. "After all her years of competing, I think she wants to look at some other career options now.

"If she decides to go back to competitive running, she'll do fine. But if she says she's through with it and goes another direction, she is probably going to do very well. This is a very smart young person who matured a lot by going to all the places she's gone to over the past few years. She's centered on her goals and enjoys being active."

An honors student, Sims lived in Dallas and Utah for a brief period during college. Those were the days when she admits she enrolled in summer school "just so she wouldn't have to leave Austin, Texas."

"I loved being in Austin ... it was such a healthy environment out there and there was so much to do," said Sims, who chose UT after making recruiting visits to Florida, LSU, Tennessee, Duke and a handful of other schools with high-level track and field programs.

Sims was part of a study done on sports doping, using a hyperbolic chamber to examine how certain drugs react with the human body and to changes in elevation.

Her best racing performance times came in college as a freshman, when she said the new training regimens allowed her to shave big seconds off her previous high marks. She made it to NCAA nationals three of her four college seasons.

"I was a good strategic runner," she said. "Sometimes you have to stretch a race out so you can stay up with the kickers. Other races make you have to be a kicker (have a good kick at the end) and I was a kicker. I was able to do different races in different ways though."

She once dreamed of being an Olympic runner and says she could still re-enter the competitive arena and pursue a chance at representing her country in the mile or half-mile.

"The best runners now have to go out and get a sponsor, but the optimum time for me would be around 27 or 28 years old so I could pursue it ... who knows?"

For now her routine includes running up and down Beach Boulevard or other city streets on the lower end of Pascagoula. She has a day job and knows only that her time is short here on the Coast.

"I came back here around Aug. 1 and I've had a job where I've met a lot of interesting people," Sims said. "I'd been out of contact with family and a lot of my friends for the past four or five years. I'm taking organic chemistry as a pre-requisite to my masters degree work and it's been nice being back.

"I've gone over to New Orleans and just tried to do some different things. I've enjoyed being home."