(from left) Teammates Sarah Rey and Grace Morningstar jog in between 600 meter repeats on October 27 at a Bethel University cross country practice in the Sports and Recreation Center. Morningstar ran to the throbbing beat of shin pain in high school until she found out that barefoot running worked best for her and alleviated her pain. “She becomes as efficient as she can through her movement’s stride, as a result of barefoot running, and it’s something she’s grown into that now she can do all the time and so it’s a healthy movement for her,” Bethel University’s head cross country coach Joe Stephens said. “Her stride I think just naturally when she was born was probably very quick, and poppy and snappy and the short ground contact was probably there this whole time, and so when you put her in heavy clunky footwear, it didn’t respond to her natural stride.”

Grace Morningstar beyond barefoot

Grace Morningstar finds her identity as a runner and beyond.

By Lydia Gessner | Author and Speaker

Grace Morningstar slips off her shoes. She steps in beside her Mount Vernon-Lisbon cross country teammates, clad in Asics, Brooks and Nikes, and they stride across the grass. She runs shoeless beside people who knew and loved her before she was ever a barefoot runner.

“I don’t think of myself as like ‘oh that girl who runs barefoot’ or like ‘the girl that doesn’t wear shoes. I think it’s different here because that’s all that some people know about me … But in high school like people knew me before that so I don’t think it was like as defining as it might be here.” — Grace Morningstar, Bethel freshman

This is a story about Grace, the girl beyond “the barefoot runner.” She has gained that title around Bethel University as a freshman on the cross country team.

“I don’t think of myself as like ‘oh that girl who runs barefoot’ or like ‘the girl that doesn’t wear shoes,’” Morningstar said. “I think it’s different here because that’s all that some people know about me … But in high school people knew me before that so I don’t think it was as defining as it might be here.”

But Grace Morningstar is so much more than her shoeless feet hitting the concrete.

She grew up in Lisbon, Iowa, but may live in a bigger city someday.

She had a literature teacher who has inspired her to want to become a high school English teacher.

She has five siblings, including Marie Morningstar, a Bethel senior.

She likes photography, speech, art and cross country, but is even more passionate about whoever she is doing it with.

Morningstar poses with her short film speech team this past season. Morningstar was involved in speech, art, band, choir, student council, National Honor Society, cross country and track and field in high school. “I would say I’m most passionate about whoever I’m doing it with. Cause I like to do art like by myself, but cross country has always been, and like speech and stuff, has always been about like the people that I am doing it with.”

She conducts photoshoots, including friends’ senior portraits.

She participated in three short films that went to All-state speech.

She wants to join an art club at Bethel or start one with her friends; these friends see her both as a runner and a person.

“But I think just as I got to know her better and talk to her more … I think it just allowed me to see a different side of her and really just get to know her, yeah, as a person,” friend and teammate Sarah Rey said.