It took a basketball game for Layne Moore to decide where she wanted to go to college.
A middle-distance runner and a senior at Emporia High, Moore had athletic scholarship offers from all over the country from track programs wanting the two-time State champion and multiple school record-holder to join their programs.
Nebraska wanted her. So did Iowa State. Colorado State brought her out for a recruiting visit to try and persuade her to join its track team, as did many of the other schools.
Those visits were nice, Moore said, but none of them were quite like the University of Missouri.
“I felt like it was a place where I could really improve and keep working towards goals that I have set for myself,” Moore said of her recruiting trip to Missouri. “It’s kind of indescribable. I just felt comfortable and felt like I could get better there.”
Still, Moore hadn’t completely made up her mind on where she wanted to go until Feb. 10, when she flipped on the Kansas-Missouri basketball game fully expecting to cheer on the Jayhawks, a team she had been a fan of her whole life.
Something changed for Moore as she watched the Tigers and Jayhawks battle in the Border Showdown. She found herself cheering for Missouri, even after years of rooting for Kansas.
And that’s when she knew.
“Almost subconsciously, I started really rooting for Missouri,” Moore said. “I didn’t necessarily mean to because I am still a KU fan, but that was kind of a sign right there that Missouri was for me.
“I knew I wanted to be there.”
A few days later, Moore called up Missouri assistant track coach Jared Wilmes and gave her commitment to run track for the Tigers. Starting this fall, Moore will be in Columbia, Mo., on a full-ride athletic scholarship.
“The whole recruiting and visiting trips were really exciting, but I would go to these different places, and the glamour of them would kind of wear off after a couple of days. Missouri just kept coming back,” Moore said. “The hardest part was telling the other places ‘no’ ... but I just felt comfortable with Missouri.”
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Doug Moore knew his daughter was going to be a runner. He could see it just by watching her with her friends.
“When Layne was a kid, she would lean forward before she took off running,” Doug said. “To me, that’s a big determiner. You see a lot of little kids running around straight up and down, and their legs are the first thing that take off. But that’s not the way you run.
“She just seemed to have a natural gift to run at an early age.”
Still, Layne didn’t start running competitively until she was 12 years old, when Doug took her to an AAU track meet in Baldwin.
In her first competitive running experience, Layne won the 1500-meter and 800-meter races. The only competitors to beat her that day were some boys who ran in the same race.
That was all it took for the blonde-haired sportster, who up until that point had played basketball and soccer. After that, she was all about running.
“She got hooked,” Doug said. “I guess she liked winning.”
Father and daughter began training together, and Layne eventually started working out with the high school track team while she was still in middle school.
Doug, who ran track at Wellington High School and Hutchinson Community College, set up an offseason training schedule for Layne, and the two would hash out goals that the young trackster would shoot for.
“I took a lot of what I knew and read a lot of contemporary stuff and came about a plan for Layne,” Doug said. “For the most part, it has worked.”
To say Layne burst onto the scene at Emporia High as a freshman could be an understatement. She set two school records as a frosh with a time of 2 minutes, 12.20 seconds in the 800-meter race and with a 5:07.60 mark in the 1600-meter run.
But then she hit a speed bump during her sophomore year when she went through a period where she says she “got burnt out and lost a little bit of focus.” Her times suffered, losing as much as 5 seconds off her 800 time.
Then, she suffered a hip injury during her junior year of cross country that sidelined her for the season.
Though frustrating, the setback gave Layne a chance to reevaluate herself as a person and as an athlete.
“It gave me the time to get back to being focused and really think about what was important to me,” she said. “I realized what I would have been giving up and what I had been training for for so long. It just brought it all back for me.”
She bounced back with a vengeance during last year’s track season, capping off her comeback with two State championships and her third school record. She won State titles in the 400 and 800, setting the school record in the 400 with a time of 56.76 seconds.
Seeing Layne work her way back from her low point showed her high school track coach, Randy Wells, that she was more than just a great runner.
“When she competes, kids feed off of that,” Wells said. “She obviously holds three school records for us and has the State titles, but her work ethic and the way she carries herself as a person, it just spreads to everybody else.
“A true champion is one that raises their level of performance and all the other ones around them as well. She does that, there’s no question about that.”
As she prepares to continue her track career at the Division-I level, Layne gives much of the credit to her father, who has been at her side from the beginning. It’s a bittersweet period for her, as she knows she will lose her training partner once she leaves for Missouri.
“He is most definitely the most important and most influential person to me as far as running goes, and he always has been,” she said. “He knows me the best, and he has always helped me set my goals, and then reach those goals.
“It’s been great to be able to bond with him in that way, and it’s going to be hard not getting to see him as much and train with him next year.”
For Doug, his daughter’s choice to go to Missouri is the reward for time well spent.
“I’m elated,” he said. “We were hoping and planning all along for something like this. I am so proud of her.”
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There’s another reason why Missouri is such a good fit for Layne.
She has a passion for journalism and is the editor-in-chief of Emporia High’s student newspaper, The Echo.
Missouri just happens to be one of the top journalism schools in the nation, a fact that played a huge role in her decision-making process.
“Missouri’s journalism school is just so impressive,” Layne said.
It is that dedication to education that Wells believes is another one of Layne’s virtuous qualities.
“She’s a kid that has her priorities right,” Wells said. “She knows education-wise what she wants to do, and Missouri offers her that.”
Layne enters her final high school track season with one eye on the future and another focused on enjoying the here and now. On the track, she hopes to build on the form she displayed as a freshman and again as a junior. Specifically, she wants to break 2:10 in the 800 and drop a couple seconds off her 400 time to get it down to 55 seconds. Breaking 5 minutes in the mile would be an added bonus, she says.
“I really am due for a pretty big breakout,” she said. “Winning is great obviously, but I think it’s more gratifying when you run faster than you ever have before.”
Her father, Doug, and her coach, Wells, both believe those numbers are possible, especially considering the way Layne has applied herself to achieving her goals since she began running.
“You have to admire what she’s done. I admire what she’s done,” Wells said. “Above all the accolades and the awards, State championships and this and that, she’s got it all. She’s a super person. She’s got the whole package.
“We always try to tell kids that if you stick to the grindstone and you do everything right and you get good grades and you go to school and you work hard, then there are going to be rewards in the end.”
For Layne — who has gone from the girl who leaned forward when she ran to being a State champion — becoming a Division I track athlete at the University of Missouri allows her the chance to continue doing what she loves.
“I get a lot of gratification of getting on the track and working hard,” Layne said. “I always feel like I’ve accomplished so much if I have a hard workout on the track. I absolutely love it.”
That much she has known all along.