ST. JOSEPH, Minn. -- Lucy Lyngen had a lot to celebrate after the Toni St. Pierre Invite on Sept. 8 at Boulder Ridge Golf Club in St. Cloud.
 
The College of Saint Benedict senior cross country runner turned in a time of 20 minutes, 21.3 seconds over the five-kilometer course – shattering her personal-best time by more than a minute, and showing the hard work she put in training during the summer has paid off.
 
But what made her result most special was that it came on the fourth anniversary of the day the De La Salle High School graduate was declared cancer-free.
 
"I always try to remind myself to be grateful for everything," said Lyngen, who was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma as a junior in high school in the spring of 2019.
 
"Thankful for my health and thankful I have the chance to run like this at the college level. If you could go back in time five years and show the senior-in-high-school version of myself where I am now, and how far I've come, she'd be amazed," said Lyngen, who also competes in the middle distance races for CSB track and field. "I'm just so grateful to be feeling good, to have an awesome school I can call home and to have such a great support network of family, friends and teammates around me."

The road to get to this point in her life has not been easy. Before her diagnosis, Lyngen had struggled with health issues and wondered what was wrong.
 
"My whole life, I'd always been pretty healthy, then all of a sudden I just wasn't feeling good," she recalls. "I'm usually pretty social, but I didn't feel like my normal Lucy self. I was just tired.
 
"I'd get colds, then I had a whole body rash. I had a fingernail fall off, and my armpit, neck and lymph nodes were swollen. Then, one night, I got so sick. I was throwing up and it felt like I was going blind. It was really scary."
 
More tests and visits to the specialist finally resulted in discovering she had Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer that attacks part of the body's germ-fighting immune system.
 
"I was still young at the time and I don't think I fully processed it at first," Lyngen said. "I was happy to finally know what was wrong. But I didn't fully grasp all that lay ahead of me – both physically and mentally."
 
The prep soccer, hockey and track and field standout began the first of her four cycles of chemotherapy that summer.
 
"I was on a bunch of different chemotherapy drugs, so it was a lot on my body all at once," Lyngen remembers. "I think it was the second day when I ordered some hospital food and it tasted way different.
 
"After that, I didn't eat the same again. I felt sick a lot. Some days people would visit and I was so drugged up I didn't even remember they were there. It was really hard," she said.
 
Lyngen also began to lose her hair, eventually deciding to shave it all off.
 
"I couldn't go into lakes that summer because I had a port in, which meant no tubing," she said. "But I was able to go to a friend's cabin and I was on a jet ski on a windy day. A bunch of my hair came out and that was a really traumatic experience. That was when I first realized this was getting real," she said. "I called my mom crying and told her I wanted to shave my head. So the next day, my parents did that. It came on the same weekend that my older sister (Leah, who graduated from CSB this past spring) had her high school graduation party. So my family had a lot to deal with."
 
And yet, when fall came around, Lyngen was determined to be back on the soccer field for her senior season at De La Salle.
 
"That was really difficult at first," she said. "During tryouts each year, we have a two-mile run. I usually did really well. But that year I couldn't even jog. So I went in for a check-up and they discovered I needed a blood transfusion because my hemoglobin levels were extremely low.
 
"I got that and I felt like a new person. After that, practice was amazing," said Lyngen.
 
Lyngen's treatments continued through her senior year, even with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. She graduated in the spring of 2020 and enrolled at CSB, finally getting the news she had been hoping for during her first fall on campus.
 
"I was so thrilled," she said. "That's when they had told me I could expect it to be gone – after four courses of chemo. And it was amazing to see it actually happen. I could have chosen to do two more rounds. But, given my situation, my oncologist recommended stopping at four. It felt so good to finally get across the finish line and be done with it."
 
Lyngen has remained cancer-free ever since, allowing her to focus on her academic and athletic career at CSB. She started out playing soccer and running track and field, but quickly decided she wanted to focus on running.
 
Her track and field coach, Robin Balder-Lanoue, also is the Bennies' cross country coach. And when she heard Lyngen was no longer playing soccer, she lobbied for her to give cross country a shot.
 
"I'd never even thought of cross country before," she said. "But Robin convinced me to give it a try, and now I'm so glad I did. I love the girls on this team so much. Just being able to be at practice with them each day brings me such joy."
 
The feeling is mutual.
 
"She's such a strong individual in every sense of the word," said All-American senior Fiona Smith, a teammate of Lyngen's in both track and field and cross country.
 
"She's a team captain and she does such a great job lifting up everyone around her," said Smith.
 
"The journey she had to go on was a difficult one, but it never stole her joy," Balder-Lanoue added. "She's someone who is always willing to put in the hard work, but knows how to keep things light and joyful too. We call her DJ Lucy because on days when we have a really hard workout, she's there with her speakers and she's always able to find music that sets a great vibe. She's just a fun person to be around."
 
And, she is supportive, as well.

Smith said Lyngen was one of the teammates who made a point to travel to Alabama to see her earn CSB's first two national championships at the NCAA Division III indoor track and field meet last March. Then she made the trip to New York in May to watch Smith compete at outdoor nationals as well.
 
"She came down with the SJU guys, driving 10-plus hours packed in a car with four boys," Smith said. "You can't ask for a better teammate than that. She's just an incredible person and so inspiring as well."
 
After spending so much time giving back to those around her, Balder-Lanoue said it's been gratifying to see Lyngen continuing to perform better and better herself.
 
She recorded four top-10 finishes in indoor track and two in the outdoor season last spring.
 
Then, after recording her personal-best 5K time at CSB's first cross country meet this fall, she recorded a personal-best time of 25:16 over 6,000 meters at the Carleton Invite this past Saturday in Northfield.
 
"She gives so much to others that it's fun to see her starting to believe in herself now too," Balder-Lanoue said. "She's really seized the moment so far this season. You can see her starting to realize what she's capable of."
 
A communication major with a minor in theology, Lyngen is scheduled to graduate in May and has already been accepted into the Saint John's University School of Theology.
 
She hopes to become a hospital chaplain, or find some other way of giving back to those facing situations similar to her own.
 
"I had so much support when I was going through what I went through," she said. "I didn't really know the priest from my church before I got sick, but my mom and I reached out and he was there for us.
 
"The social workers were all the kindest people. They were so supportive. And there were volunteers who came by and brought blankets and things like that. It all meant so much, and it really made me want to explore a career where I could be part of that support system for other people," Lyngen said.
 
Of course, there are still her final seasons of cross country and track and field to complete as well.
 
"I'm really excited," Lyngen said. "Cross country is going really well so far. I definitely feel like I've improved a lot. I've felt healthier and healthier with each passing year. This summer, I worked really hard to get ready for the season. So it's nice to see the results starting to come."