A Race To The Future
Family support, tradition provide base for Elysian Fields state champion Cara Sims
Cara Sims always keeps the finish line in mind.
The hard-working Elysian Fields junior distance runner just completed a magical school year in which she earned three individual state championships in Class 2A and broke two state records in the process.
But just a week after capping off an impressive one-two punch in the 3200 meter and 1600 meter runs at the state track meet in Austin, Cara had something else on her mind: getting ready for the next one.
That’s finish line mentality, and the youngest child of Chad and Jana Sims has it. The young runner understands that before you can begin to think about finishing a race, you first have to reach the starting line. That’s where one of the most dominant young runners in the state begins every season.
A Strong Start
One meeting with the Sims family and it becomes glaringly obvious – Cara Sims was born to run.
Her mother, Jana, grew up in the sport with running in the blood. Jana’s two uncles, Kyle Heffner and John Heffner, cut quite a swath as competitive district runners. John was the 1969 Southwest Conference cross country champion while attending Texas A&M, and Kyle qualified for the 1980 U.S. Olympic team as a marathon runner. He was unable to compete, however, as the United States boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow due to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in December of 1979.
Jana’s mother, Janiece Yarbro, was the middle child sandwiched between her brothers and acquired the toughness of a marathon runner despite not competing herself. She settled nicely into the role of fierce supporter, both for her brothers and her daughter.
Janiece raised Jana and her sister as a single parent and encouraged Jana to follow her heart as a young lady. Those instincts were for competition of course, and with her mother’s overwhelming backing and support, Jana also took up the sport of distance running.
“I was blessed to be born to her,” Jana said of her mom. “I have always been drawn toward training and physical improvement, so every chance I had I would learn from my uncles.”
Jana raced competitively and carved out her own niche as a cross country runner in college, at East Texas Baptist University. Jana was part of a first-year program that saw her finish eighth in the NAIA regionals in 1994, missing qualifying for nationals by just one spot. In 1996-1997, she was named Most Outstanding Performer and finished third overall in the Big State Conference cross country standings. She has since been inducted in the ETBU Athletic Hall of Fame for her career as a Tiger.
She met and married Chad Sims, who now serves as Harrison County Judge, and began to start a family. Son Grant became a standout runner in his own right at Elysian Fields before moving on the college ranks by competing at West Texas A&M and then, most recently, at the University of Houston.
The Sims’ youngest child, daughter Cara, grew up surrounded by all of these running and racing influences. She dabbled in other sports growing up, looking for a niche in which she could blaze her own trail. But no matter how much she enjoyed other sports like volleyball and basketball, running was in her blood. Literally.
“I’ve been running and going to 5k’s and fun runs since I can remember,” Cara recalled. “I’m pretty sure I ran my first one when I was like five years old, and I cried more than halfway and ran with my dad. Actually, I walked more than half of it. So, I’ve been doing this since I was about five, just on and off.”
Middle school was where the lure of the trail and the track began to grow strong. She was involved in everything in seventh grade athletics, including the team sports like volleyball and basketball, and she enjoyed it. But she also decided to compete in cross country and track as well.
The rest is history.
She won the district championship in both cross country and track in seventh grade, and she was hooked. She was looking forward to a similar performance in eighth grade but was sidelined during cross country season due to a concussion. But during the spring track season, she made it back-to-back district championships.
“After I won district in seventh grade, I was like oh, you’re pretty good at this,” she said, smiling. “The concussion thing was a whole ordeal but then I came back in track season and won again so I was like, okay, this is what I’m good at.”
Cara attended a running camp in Crested Butte, Col., the summer of her freshman year. It was a 10-day camp that sealed her love for the sport – so much so that Cara made the decision to drop everything else and focus solely on distance running.
“I just decided that this is what I’m doing,” she said. “I love this. I love the environment, I love the people, it’s what makes me feel good. My success is dictated by me. I’m going to work for a team, don’t get me wrong, but the team has to work for me, too. Cross country and track are team-oriented, but it’s also individualized. I can decide my own success, which I really appreciate. I can’t be mad at someone else when I know everything’s on me.”
Standing quietly in the background as her daughter grew up was Jana. She and Chad – also a runner – could see the qualities that make a champion distance runner in Cara, but she had to decide what was best for her. Freshman year at Elysian Fields was where the decision was made. To make things all the better, Jana serves as the cross country coach in EF, so she and Cara would be working side by side, full time, on running the race.
“I do believe that she was born with a natural bent and slant, but I also believe her environment and specifically her older brother has really been a safe place for her to see what’s up ahead and to passively learn without it costing her a lot,” Jana said. “To understand why certain things need to happen in certain orders, or why you need to do certain things at certain times…I think Grant has been a tremendous role model, an example, and from a very relaxed space she’s been able to learn a lot. I think she’s been able to internalize that and apply it to her own life, and it’s been to her advantage.”
“I’m a very competitive person, so of course I want to keep up to par,” Cara said. “I don’t think a lot of my family knows this, but when I was 15 I ran a marathon and my uncle (Kyle), who was an Olympic marathon runner, ran his first one when he was 16. So, I’m the youngest in my family to have a marathon. I like that age.
“I’m competitive like that but Grant has definitely hit all the bumps in the road for me,” she continued. “I feel like I have a smooth sailing path ahead of me. I’m grateful for him to show me the way to learn from him, not just mistakes but to learn what he did right and learning how to go about things, how to talk to coaches and other athletes. He’s just really helped me grow to love the sport.”
With her focus now on a single goal and purpose, Cara Sims was off and running.
Winning From Within
Freshman year for Cara was outstanding. She knew she had made the right decision to focus just on cross country and track. But she was still learning the sport, with coaching from her mom and also her accomplished uncles.
But the running bloodline kicked into high gear during Cara’s sophomore year in 2023-2024, as she won district championships in both sports and qualified for state. She did extremely well, but expected more entering this school year last fall.
Her junior year started with a dominating cross country season in 2024, ending with the Class 2A state championship in November. It was quite an accomplishment for a young runner who had barely been doing it for two full years, to be crowned as the best in the state. But cross country proved to be the warmup for what would become the spring of Sims.
“Cross country definitely boosted my ego, just knowing that I’m already a state champion,” Cara said as she recalled preparing for spring track season. “Just knowing that I did that, and I won by a pretty good amount, gave me confidence. I did hit a little bit of a mental block after cross country season ended. I was burned out. But I love running, so just getting my momentum back and bringing the win from cross country over to track season definitely helped me to reassure myself.
“You have to love the process to have progress.”
The process. It’s a trendy term in all sports, to acknowledge and respect the “process.” For Cara Sims, however, the process is truly where all of her success begins.
“Endurance running is building a base,” she explained, with the confident knowledge of someone seemingly older and more experienced than a 17-year-old high school junior. “You have to have endurance and then you can add some speed. Then, endurance plus speed allows you to run faster for a longer period of time. Personally, I run anywhere from 50 to 65 miles a week. People might think that’s crazy, but I’m not running super fast all the time. I’m just…going. Going forward, always. Consistency is the key.”
Jana, who Cara describes as her mom, her coach, her trainer, her nutritionist, and her therapist, takes Cara’s commitment to training a step further.
“When she trains, she doesn’t just train for the 3200 or the mile, she trains for the whole day,” she added. “She’s been doing that since she was a freshman. I think it shows a lot of courage to take on so much work and to condition herself. Everything she does is transparent; she puts her workouts on social media, every workout she does. I have other coaches call me, text me, asking me how I make her do that. I don’t. She does it on her own. Cara wins from within. Not having people to run with, at her pace, takes tremendous character and grit. She wins from within.”
Cara roared through district and regionals, with personal bests littered throughout the spring. The finish line, however, was still in sight – Austin. She qualified for three races at the state meet: the 3200 meters, the 1600 meters, and the 800 meters, the trifecta of distance running.
If that weren’t enough, she was scheduled to run all three…in one day. That would be a grand total of 5,600 meters – or 3.48 miles. Up first was the 3200, the two-mile run, and the young Lady Jacket runner had prepared herself for this very day, all season long.
Cara said she treats races all the same, despite the distance, with some mild variations. The first 12 seconds, she calls that “free energy” – adrenaline is at its highest peak, and her body is begging for a sprint. So those first dozen seconds, Cara will hit a sprint out of the blocks, burning that “extra” energy in a fight-or-flight mode. After that burst, she looks to settle into consistency as far as time splits, looking to be in the 1:17 or 1:18 range, she said, on those first couple of laps.
Then the third lap – particularly in the 1600, or mile race – she calls the “sneaky third.” At this stage, she “puts the hammer down” to create some distance between herself and her closest competitors. The goal is to create as much distance as possible between herself and the second-place runner, so much distance that it will be practically impossible to catch her on the final lap of the 1600. The last 300 meters is for her final kick, with nothing but the finish line in sight.
This type of detailed, focused strategy also comes into play in the two-mile run, which Cara says is her strongest race. It was this first race of the day at state that she had focused on, because she felt both the state title and possibly the state record time were hers to lose.
“In the 3200 I went in very confidently,” she recalled. “That’s my strongest race. I knew what my times were compared to the others (opponents). I knew what the record was and I’d already ran faster than the record. During the race, I mostly thought ‘you’re just going to go break the record so keep your pace…you feel good, stay strong, and run fast.’”
All the training, all the lonely, hot (or cold and rainy) mornings of overcoming the urge to hit snooze and sleep in, all the aches and pains that come from your feet pounding the pavement morning after morning, the long disciplined hours of recovery and rest that are just as much a part of competitive running as the running itself – all of that came into play when Cara Sims approached the two-mile marker.
She crossed the line knowing she had just done something special – she was the best Class 2A runner in the state, putting her in some elite company with the best overall high school distance runners in Texas. Not only that, she shattered the Texas state record with a blazing time of 10:47.51, which was a full 30 seconds better than the next racer.
She had done it. Cara Sims was a state champion, again, giving her two titles in this one school year. And, she wasn’t done yet.
Jana, along with a host of family, friends, and supporters from East Texas who had traveled down to Austin to watch the events, knew something special had just happened. As a mom, Jana was certainly proud to see her daughter break the state record. But she was also a coach, and after the race she immediately went into coach mode.
There was another race to run. Two of them, in fact.
“I was thrilled she broke the record,” she said. “But the coach in me was like, we’ve got to start recovering. She was being interviewed, there were people wanting to talk to her, she was pulled in multiple directions. We had a wonderful fan club there that was very hard to corral to get pictures. As a coach, it was very stressful because I was just focusing on, at the time, the next race. There’s always the next race.”
Jana knew Cara’s training regimen all spring had been to run all three races in one day. Her body had been conditioned to run all those meters somewhat back-to-back-to-back, and the coach in her wanted her to continue that disciplined schedule of run-rest-recovery, run-rest-recovery, rinse-and-repeat.
Then came the weather delay. The nightmare scenario would have been just enough rain to throw off the schedule but still run the last two races still on the same day. But the heavens opened up and the races were postponed until the following day – Saturday, May 3.
Then Jana the coach began to concern herself with losing an edge because of the delay. Because Cara had trained so hard to run all those races in one day, they were confident she would make it an advantage. It became more about all the other runners catching a break from the postponement rather than worrying about Cara’s recovery from the 3200.
“I definitely could’ve raced all three,” Cara said. “I’d been preparing to race all three, all season long. I was ready to do it that day. But it was definitely God’s grace to give me a little break and come back and race the 800 and the 1600 the day after.”
Her mind and body were back in peak form and ready to roll on that championship Saturday. The day began with the 800, or half-mile. It is a hybrid event, longer than a typical sprint style of race but also not long enough to give a true distance runner a distinct advantage.
Cara put her thoughts on preparing for the state 800 a little more bluntly.
“I did that for giggles,” she said with a wide smile. “I had qualified for it, so I might as well do it. But, (the 800) is not my preference. All I was thinking about was getting across the finish line.”
The 800 does tend to favor the more natural sprinters, who can get away with extending themselves because the distance isn’t quite as demanding. It is typically a mix of quarter-milers and distance runners, so a 400 meter competitor can typically do well in the 800 if they add just a little bit of distance training. It is not a race that Cara considered a strong spot for her, particularly at the state meet.
Still, she ran a strong fifth, with a time of 2:18.98 – just five seconds behind the state champion in that event, Kaycei Salazar of La Villa Early College High School, who ran a 2:13.92. Salazar had finished as the runnerup in the 3200, so a little rivalry was brewing at the state meet in the Class 2A distance ranks.
The Elysian Fields standout quickly turned her attention to the 1600 meter run and another shot at history.
The Happiest Person You Know
The final race of the day for Cara Sims began with some drama. Through the first couple of laps, she was being pushed as much as she had been pushed all season. This was not shaping up as a coast to the finish, and Cara knew it.
“I had this one girl pushing me a little bit for about half the race, so I ran a little scared because I hate to lose,” she said. “I did not want to get caught in the last 100 (meters), so I just kept thinking ‘pull ahead of her, pull ahead of her, let’s go, let’s go!’ Then, I heard over the intercom the announcement about being on a record pace. (At that point), I started turning my wheels a little bit more and crossed the finish line. I could smell the record.”
Smell it, indeed. Not only did Cara finish with her third state championship of the school year, she broke the state record in the mile with a time of 5:03.92. That was 10 seconds faster than her new rival, Salazar, who finished second in 5:13.35. A great race, pitting two state champs head-to-head again, and ultimately the lifelong Lady Jacket came home with two out of the three titles.
And finally, mom and coach could relax and enjoy both. It has become a tricky game of balance that Jana strives to win every day.
“I do think about it,” Jana said of the balance between being mom and coach to the state’s top Class 2A distance runner. “It’s a concept I think about all the time. I believe to be balanced, you have to always be focused on something and moving towards it. The focus is to help Cara get into the school of her choice, and to help her have a successful year, to just improve upon where she is. We need to celebrate where we are and be happy and content because if we’re not happy and content, then it’s hard to use that as a platform to go forward. So, we celebrate the daily wins, the little wins, and keep our eyes focused on the bigger, bigger goal. Balance as a mom and a coach is just keeping my eyes on that goal – just going forward, every single step.”
Back in Elysian Fields, Cara gave herself a week off before she began focusing on the next step – her senior year. With everything she has accomplished in a record-setting junior season – state championship in cross country, state championships in both the mile and two-mile races, and two state records…the goal posts haven’t just moved. They’ve become more narrow as well.
The first challenge is overcoming the bit of notoriety she will have as a senior competitor. For all the performance-based accolades she’s received, Cara admits there is a bit of a drawback to the success.
“I’m not an underdog anymore,” she said. “I love being the underdog, that’s great. But the scary part is that people know who I am now. It’s all out in the open. The others know that I’m training hard to win first place, so that might motivate them to try even harder. But I’m gonna work my butt off to run faster and win again.”
Her coach has full confidence that Cara will once again put herself in position to compete at the highest level during her final season of high school racing.
“She (hit a personal record) in every single event at state,” Coach Sims said. “To me, that says a lot, not only about the effort she put forth that day but also the training. Her training was so precise this time around, and that is something that as a coach I’m still celebrating because she really hit the mark on everything.”
After the week off, Cara set her sights on cross country season. Her training for the fall began in mid-May. Training includes not just her personal runs but also working with her teammates in order to build the best cross country team possible in Elysian Fields.
“Back to running, just building the base and getting back into it,” Cara said of how she will spend her summer. “What I do know will show up in three months. So if I have a really good week now, my end goal is going to be really good. Three months out from state cross country, I need to have my best week of the season. We kind of try to see the future, to set it all up to be sharp and perform my best on that specific day.”
And though it may look easy watching her glide around a track or through the countryside, the aches and pains from running do take a toll, even on a young, state champion teen.
“I do ask myself sometimes, ‘why?’ I do ask it a lot,” she said. “Like, ‘why am I not playing volleyball, or something else?’ But this is what I love. My family is so good about backing me up and helping me. My mom helps me not hurt so much. I take ice, Advil, Epsom salt baths, for soreness. My diet’s also really good for recovery.
“But, I also wouldn’t be here without my dad [her running partner], or my grandmas. If you come to a cross country meet, or a track meet, or anything I’m involved in, my grandmas are there you’re going to hear them. They are screaming.”
With so much success, Cara is certainly receiving a lot of attention from college coaches. She will be juggling some important decisions over the next few months. Not only will she be focused on training for the next round of races in her career, but she will also be trying to decide where to continue her running at the next level.
“Coaches are still kind of recruiting the class of 2025,” she said. “I’ll be going on a few visits this summer and then I’ll focus a lot more on it during the fall once (college) semesters start. When I am being recruited, I’m getting recruited for (both) cross country and track.”
She also stressed that she is looking forward to getting back to her team environment and sharing the experience of running with her school teammates in Elysian Fields.
“They’re definitely fired up,” Cara said of her cross country teammates, who will also be training with her all summer to get ready for the upcoming season. “We’re definitely ready and eager to keep working, and hopefully we’ll all go to state next year.”
Regardless of the results, Cara plans on enjoying the ride. It’s one she’s been on almost her entire life, and it’s one she doesn’t want to jump off of anytime soon. Competition is part of it, she says, and the chase for the next personal record is a constant goal.
But the most appealing part of being a three-time state champion in distance running is the people she meets along the way.
“There’s not a mean runner out there,” she said. “I mean, like, every time you go to a cross country meet or a track meet and you hang with the distance people you’re like, oh my gosh, these are the nicest people ever. There’s no trash talking, it’s like encouragement and ‘you’re going to do so good today, you’re awesome, I’m so proud of you’ all the time. We’ll huddle up before the race and pray together. They’re just so bubbly.
“Think of the happiest person you may know, and that’s all the distance runners. It’s great.”
David Weaver is a freelance journalist with Write Team Services based in Longview, Texas.