In high school, every day was the same for sisters Mary and Margo Malone: school, practice, family dinner.

With a family of runners, it wasn’t hard to anticipate that the dinner conversation would go to cross-country.

But then Margo went off to college, and the dinner conversations got a little quieter. This year, the conversations are relocating to Syracuse as the two sisters are reunited on the women’s cross-country team, with Margo in her third season and Mary starting her first. 

“I was ecstatic when she told me,” Margo said of Mary’s commitment to SU. “I couldn’t believe it and I think it’s going to be really cool to share this with her.”

Margo was the women’s top runner last year, earning All-Atlantic Coast Conference and All-Northeast Region honors, while Mary was an accomplished high school senior, leading North Hills High School in Pittsburgh.

It started in fourth grade. Like most the kids at St. Teresa of Avila School — a private Catholic grade school in Pittsburgh — Margo began exploring sports. She dabbled in basketball and soccer, but cross-country was the one that stuck. 

It had something the other sports didn’t: her mother, Midge Malone, as the coach. 

Margo fell in love with the sport, so her younger sisters Shannon and Mary decided to give it a try, too. 

Throughout high school, Margo and Mary’s lives revolved around running. They trained and practiced together — along with Shannon, who runs for the University of Virginia and is in between the other two sisters in age — which helped bring them closer.

They were always challenging and pushing each other to get better for every weekend spent traveling to meets.

“There was a little bit of sibling rivalry,” Midge said. “They were always really close in speed in high school, but they always had a healthy competition.”

It was that sibling rivalry that helped the Malones dominate the cross-country and track and field scene at North Hills.  At a tri-state coaches invitational, the Malone sisters were the first three women to finish the race.

Mary and Margo had a passion for the sport that their high school coach John Wilkie said he rarely ever sees. 

“Margo and Mary really love hard work,” Wilkie said. “Typically an athlete will put up with it knowing they have to do it to improve, but the Malones actually relished the hard work.”

The three sisters led North Hills to two consecutive Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League Triple-A cross-country titles in 2010 and 2011, and earned 15 combined individual WPIAL medals.

This past summer, Mary and Shannon joined Margo and the SU women’s team on a training session in Lake Tahoe, a trip organized by the girls on the team.

SU head coach Chris Fox said Mary has high expectations for herself given her sister’s performance.

“Margo has kind of set the bar high because she’s had such a great two years here, especially the last year,” Fox said. “And so Mary thinks kind of bigger than most incoming freshmen.”

Fox hasn’t had a chance to observe Mary in practice very much, but said he believes she could be among the top seven runners the team takes to each meet. 

Even though Mary is running for a new team and a new coach, she’ll be racing beside a familiar face — one that she knows will motivate her.

“It helps with the transition because I know how she runs and I know where I should be in comparison to her,” Mary said. “If I’m ever having a bad day, she’s there.”

Published on September 4, 2014 at 12:20 am

Contact Jon: jrmettus@syr.edu | @jmettus