Melanie Bailey carried an injured competitor more than a quarter of a mile to receive aid during a race — Associated Press via Devils Lake Journal
Devils Lake High cross country runner Melanie Bailey should have finished the 2.4 mile course at Ponderosa Golf Course earlier than she did. The senior knows that. But she also knows that her delay came because she was weighed down by more than expectations: Bailey was carrying a competitor across the finish line.
As first reported by the Devils Lake Journal and followed upon by the Associated Press, Bailey was more than two-thirds of the way through her cross country race at Ponderosa when a runner in front of her began crying in pain. Out of instinct, the Devils Lake senior stopped to try and help her fellow runner, but Danielle Lenoue, begged for Bailey to go on instead.
She was having none of it. Instead, Bailey stopped and tried to have Lenoue lean on her to see if she could walk forward with aid. She couldn’t. That inspired Bailey to do something that she physically should not have been able to do: For nearly half a mile, she carried Lenoue, who is taller and larger, on her back until they reached medical attention, a distance of more than a quarter of a mile.
Once there, Lenoue was assessed and later taken to a hospital, where she learned that she had torn both the patellar tendon and meniscus in one of her knees. She would have struggled with excruciating pain to make it to that aid checkpoint without Bailey’s help and her impromptu piggyback ride.
As for Bailey, the North Dakota senior is more confused about why her heroics are considered a big deal. As far as she’s concerned, Bailey was just doing what anyone would do when coming upon a fellow competitor in obvious distress.
“She was just sobbing, I couldn’t leave her,” Bailey, who reportedly lives with her grandmother, told the Devils Lake Journal. “I felt so bad for her, I had to do something.
“I feel like I was just doing the right thing.”
It goes without saying that she was, and that one North Dakota cross country race — heck, even Ponderosa Golf Course itself — was made better for her being a part of it.