UAA steeplechase champion Marco Quaroni has flourished in the team concept at Washington University, bringing his camera along every step of the way.

“I always took photos with my family. I love documenting people’s individuality through photos,” he said. “It is very eye-opening to see someone expressing themselves.”

BECOMING A RUNNER

Growing up in Austin, Texas, Quaroni was well aware which sports were considered high profile. “I always knew the titans of sports were football, baseball, and basketball in Texas,” he remarked. “I dabbled in a lot of sports, particularly tennis. I enjoyed the individual and mental aspects of the sport.”

He grew up in a family active in athletics. His father fenced at University of Notre Dame and his sister ended up playing lacrosse at Occidental College. Quaroni started running in the fifth grade, but didn’t commit to running year-round until freshman year in high school. “It was something that wasn’t football, but I could still push myself as hard as I could being scrawny,” he laughed. “After the first few races when I did pretty well, it became my secret favorite sport.”

Quaroni credits much of his passion for running at a high level to meeting Gilbert Tuhabonye, who was born in the Central African nation of Burundi and was the lone survivor of a school massacre during the Burundian Civil War in the 1990s. “Running was what really saved him. I owe everything in my journey to him due to his pure belief,” he commented. “Even though he has seen incredible atrocity, he is the happiest person I know. Just the way he carries himself is inspirational. We run together at 5 a.m. every day in the summer. He is a great role model.”

Although his sister attended high school in Austin, Quaroni took a different route. “The summer before eighth grade, one of my sister’s friends went to a boarding school in Virginia and a recruiter was coming to talk at my school,” he recalled. “I had always associated boarding school with reform school or a military academy as most people in the South do. I agreed to go to the event, but said, ‘I am 100 percent staying in Austin.’ In the car after the talk, I was dead silent. My mind was blown. I had always loved learning and school was pretty easy for me. Now I saw this strong academic and well-rounded opportunity that I didn’t know existed.”

He did research to determine schools that he believed would be a good fit, looking for a diverse, highly-academic student body. He landed at The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut. “I understood it would be a great opportunity. I took the leap of faith and had a great experience,” he recollected. “I fell in love with school and running even more.”

Quaroni finished first on the team in his final high school cross country meet his first season, a New England all-star. One of his most prominent memories came from the beginning of his freshman year. “I was wearing short shorts and a singlet, but everyone else was wearing long shorts,” he chuckled. “I was the weird kid from Texas.”

Having only run cross country, Quaroni was intrigued when his chemistry teacher and coach Pierre Yoo suggested he also try running track. He certainly didn’t imagine at that time that he would be pursuing All-America honors as a collegiate steeplechaser.

WASHU

“My college decision was at the crossroads of which division to go to and what experience I wanted,” he stated. “I had to decide whether to go to school to run or go to school and run. I made some D1 visits, but it was clear that D3 was the best option for the mix of academic rigor, extra-curricular activities, and running. I ran with a guy who went to WashU and I knew of the values of the UAA and the school. The magic of WashU jumped out at me and it was a great moment when I discovered the perfect fit for me.”

“He and his parents are super appreciative about his opportunities and have been gushing about WashU from the recruiting process on,” said Bears’ head men’s and women’s track and field coach Jeff Stiles. “He has always been a good fit here, with me, the school, and the team. His experience is what we hope everyone has.”

Cross country has seemed like a natural for Quaroni. “It is a nurture vs. nature question for cross country runners,” he remarked. “We tend to spend a lot of time alone studying hard and you can run hard along with your thoughts. It is the perfect mix for me.”

Running the steeplechase was certainly not something he planned on. “After the conference meet in Atlanta my freshman year of cross country, I thought I was peaking at the right time and decided that race would finish out the season,” Quaroni recollected. “Coach Stiles thought I would be a strong racer not pacing the entire time. For the steeplechase, you have to be dynamic, and speed up and slow down based on the course. He figured with my sports background and athletic ability, I could do it.”

“We have some specific drills for running the steeplechase and Marco took to it,” Stiles recalled. “He was a good runner who took the hurdling. It was my event in college and so I have an affinity for it. For Marco, it happened pretty naturally.”

“Steeple is a weird mix of putting yourself in an aerobic position, but with something that won’t move every 80 meters,” Quaroni explained. “We never see it as a barrier, but as an opportunity to accelerate. That is what (assistant coach) Gordon Reiter always says. It really is how you can get over the barriers.”

UAA STEEPLECHASE TITLE

Quaroni finished first in the 3,000-meter steeplechase at the 2018 UAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships at Carnegie Mellon University. “I remember taking the lead in the second lap and solely focused on getting over one barrier after another, but started to realize we were spreading out well for the team, and it was so energizing,” he said. “A lot of people fell early in the race so I tried not to focus on that. With about two laps to go, Coach Stiles was talking to the guys behind me and I was thinking how well we were doing as a team.”

The Bears ended up taking the top four spots in the event. “My happiest moment was seeing Dillon Williams, who had worked so hard and tried so many things to improve, come in second and then Tommy Fruhauf right behind him,” Quaroni expressed. “Jack Sebok was crushing it and clawing tooth and nail against Bennett Shaw of Emory. When he crossed the line in fourth, we all freaked out. We didn’t know that it would be possible for us to finish 1-2-3-4 and we rode that high all night.”

Quaroni would learn shortly after the race that Sebok was one of the runners who had fallen, actually breaking his wrist and bruising his kneecap. “He couldn’t make it back for any of the last chance meets. That is the sort of love that is present within the team,” he vocalized. “That mentality that ‘I am going to put my body through pain and suffering for one another.’ That and the opportunity to run in front of my parents were the highlights of the meet.”

The team concept is what Quaroni values the most in his collegiate athletic experience. “Coach Stiles has really cultivated this team’s identity and it is something we strive to get the new guys to fall in love with it,” he described. “We are two teams, but one family. Cross country is one family in the fall. Track has all these different events, but we all still come together. The steeple team is strong internally and we can share that with the rest of team and focus on team goals. Team and personal aspirations combine perfectly. It’s for us and we.”

Camaraderie extends to other steeplechase competitors as well. “I love so many of the guys who run steeple in the UAA. I remember Shaw congratulated me after the race last year,” Quaroni noted. “We are all supporting one another. I am looking forward to seeing these guys at UAAs this weekend and hopefully in the postseason. We spend a lot of time talking about school and being a student-athlete.”

STAYING BUSY AT WASHU

In high school, Quaroni worked for the school newspaper and yearbook, but when he started college, he decided to bring his camera to wherever the WashU cross country team competed. “I would run my race and then take photos of the women’s race and send them to (assistant coach) Kelli Blake, who runs our Instagram account,” he mentioned. “I made a Google Drive of all the photos and share them. I was just taking pictures of my friends so it never felt like work. I continued to do it during track meets, though of course I couldn’t get the men who were competing at the same time I was.”

Blake suggested Quaroni speak with the school’s sports information directors about taking photos for more sports than cross country and track. “I started shooting at a lot more sports and now have shot almost every sport at WashU,” he said. “I was happy to provide something to sports that they may not have had it in the past.”

“Marco has been a great addition to our staff and has taken our photography to the next level. He does a great job of showcasing our tremendous student-athletes across all sports,” said Assistant Athletic Director for Communications Chris Mitchell. “Marco is a bright young man, and we’re very thankful we have him around for another year.”

“Marco has been an instrumental part in the coverage of not only track & field at WashU, but also as a part of the whole athletic community, whether it be on the field of play or at an outside athletic event,” concurred Assistant Sports Information Director Kevin Stiner. “He is always personable, professional, and fits into whatever environment we ask him to shoot. We are extremely lucky to have found such an intelligent and kind-hearted individual to intern with us in the sports information department and it just so happens that he is a world class photographer.”

“Marco loves the team and the community of WashU. He loves giving back to the athletic department by taking photos,” Stiles stated. “He likes being busy, taking on multiple things, and he is really good at everything he does. He doesn’t just do photography, he could do it professionally if he wanted to. He wants to give back. He is looking for things to help out with. He wants to know, ‘How can I serve? How can I help?’”

“The best thing is support from the families, who appreciate the photos. Parents are very complimentary. They can have the photos. Getting photos of their child is a service hard to find anywhere else,” he said. “There are tons of student-athletes just like me. I am studying business and this is something I love to do on the side. (Swimming student-athlete and fellow business major) Nathan Katz asked how he could get involved. I’d like to recruit more student-athletes who love to take photos.”

Business has remained Quaroni’s main focus and he interviewed for as many as eight internship positions during the fall. “He fell in love with WashU very quickly. For most people, it takes a little bit of time. It happened so quickly for him and it is evident in everything he has done,” Stiles added. “He has done really well academically. He was flying all over the place with the business internship interviews in the fall. He has had a time-consuming year and he has learned a lot through that.”

“There was a three- or four-week period where I would fly out for interviews every Thursday evening and return on Friday evening,” he recalled. “I must have had between 12 and 15 interviews just in that time, as many of the interviews had three or four rounds.”

“He has a willingness to take on a lot. The biggest challenge, in a good way, with him is what he has time to do. He is great at everything so the key is determining his priorities and trying to help him figure out how to best use the time in each day. He tends to thrive while being busy. Down time to him is boring, Down time to me is life giving,” Stiles commented.

Quaroni did secure a summer internship in St. Louis at Anheuser-Busch. “I felt lucky to interview at so many firms and get to travel,” he mentioned. “It definitely was a balancing act with coming back from an injury, school, training, and extra-curricular activities, but I had so much fun getting to see inside each company and to see what could be in store for my future career. Anheuser-Busch is a new industry for me, but I am so ready to learn.”

TRAVELING

Boosting his interest in photography, Quaroni has had the opportunity to travel to various countries. “My dad was born in Milan and moved to the U.S. when he was 17 or 18. He really wanted to stay close to his family in Italy so we would travel there every other year,” he remembered. “His sister has lived in France, Switzerland, and Italy. I am very thankful my parents have indoctrinated us with the opportunity to travel. We always make time to visit museums on trips. My sister is an artist so walking around a museum with her is amazing. She even knows the brush strokes.”

In high school, Quaroni spent 1½ weeks in Florence and it left a lasting impression on him. “A dream of mine now is to rent a moped and make my way up the country both running and taking photos.”

The summer before his freshman year at WashU, he went on a program that traveled with a National Geographic photographer to the Himalayas. “It was astounding to see the Himalayas, which I had always wanted to see, and to see how professional photographers see people and how they tell their stories in photos. It is special to be able to tell stories of people we don’t know.”

In addition to the aforementioned places, Quaroni has also traveled to Peru, Chile, Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, Spain, and Switzerland. “One time I took an Andian history course, which was a totally different class for me, but it was great to have been there and seen things in person that we were talking about,” he observed. “I could say, ‘I have seen that!’”

Competing in cross country and track & field, he does his traveling in the summer. “A lot of my friends are abroad. Sometimes it feels like I am the only junior on campus,” he joked. “I do have some Instagram envy and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).”