Photo patience inspires Andrus’ running

Brooke Andrus sits in a high school gymnasium, camera at the ready.

She watches the freshman basketball team bumble through the first game. She catches all the action, no matter how messy.
Junior varsity’s turn. She stays, still snapping photo after photo.

Time goes by. One hour, then two. A third passes. 

The varsity match-up. Through fouls, lay-ups and long-range threes, Andrus continues shooting.

Patiently waiting for that one shot, and the next picture that captures an athlete’s true emotion. It could be overwhelming joy from hitting a game-winner or devastating misery from fouling out of a tight game.

To find that perfect moment takes great patience. It takes time for everything to come together: action, emotion, lighting, composition.

Andrus takes the lesson in patience that photography gives her and runs with it – literally.

***

Andrus, a seven-time Montana state champ in track and cross country, is currently a sophomore at the University of Montana, where she majors in photojournalism.

She’s always been a runner. When she was a kid living in Utah, her mom couldn’t find a lot of time to get her own running in, so she toted her two youngsters along to the track, letting them play in the infield while she ran her laps.

Andrus was intrigued.

“I decided, ‘I’m going to run a mile without stopping,’” Andrus said.

She started out running one lap. The next day she might run two. She gave herself time. Gradually she worked herself up to a full mile. She was only in the first grade. 

Andrus’ dad, Bart Andrus, showed great patience as he dragged his crying daughter through a five-kilometer road race when she was in third grade. Andrus cried the whole way, but the end of the race was a thrill. The tears faded into a big smile.

“As soon as I got to the end and heard all those people cheering, then I was like, ‘OK, this is cool.’” Andrus said.

She won her age division and got a medal for her efforts.

“I was hooked,” Andrus said.

During her high school days in Big Fork, Andrus ran for the “godfather of Montana track,” Neil Eliason, and became a track star. 

Andrus dominated middle-distance Class A runners in Montana. In the spring of her junior year, she took home state titles in the 800 meters, 1,600 meters and 3,200 meters. And the following season, she did the exact same thing. In the meantime, she managed to grab herself the Class A state cross country title as a junior.

UM head track coach Tom Raunig noticed Andrus early in her high school career. Big Fork had a strong track team with some older girls on it. Raunig said he kept his eye on Andrus throughout her career. She continued to improve her running and he recruited her as soon as he was able to.

“We were able to start recruiting her right away,” Raunig said.

Many different schools scouted her: the University of Texas, Texas Christian University, the University of Utah. But it was UM that reeled her in, hook, line
and sinker.

“When I came on my visit here, I just felt like I was already part of the team,” Andrus said. “Coach Raunig told me right off the bat, ‘We want you.’ The other coaches played games with me. Coach Raunig from the very beginning made me feel like I was wanted here.”

If the coach’s enthusiasm to have her join the team wasn’t enough, or the fact that she’s only a hop, skip and a jump away from home, a great journalism school was the cherry on top. Andrus recently applied to UM’s School of Journalism and will start in the professional photography program next fall.

***

Andrus got her first taste of photography her senior year in high school. She started working on the school newspaper her sophomore year, writing and editing. Her senior year, on top of being the editor of her paper, she joined the yearbook staff. It was there she started taking pictures for the sports pages, sitting in the gym, waiting for the right moment.

While she was shooting a high school basketball game, Katherine Head, then-editor of the town’s newspaper, the Bigfork Eagle, approached her. Their sports photographer had recently left, and they needed another photographer.

Andrus did an unpaid internship with the publication for three months that winter and then again during the summer before coming to UM. Head took her under her wing and taught Andrus the ropes.

“I think starting with sports photography is what really got me hooked,” Andrus said. “I loved having the timing and everything come together and getting that moment of an athlete in action, capturing that freeze frame. It was almost like a game to me to get that shot.”

***

Andrus is patient when it comes to her training. She works hard, but paces herself. She doesn’t want to overexert herself and get injured.

“You can’t go out and pound yourself into the ground because you want to get into shape quicker,” Andrus said. “You have to ease yourself into it.”

Injuries have found Andrus to be unhurried about her running. Her sophomore year of high school she suffered from IT band syndrome, in which the band of tissue that runs from the pelvis down to the knee becomes inflamed. That sidelined Andrus for three months. Her senior year, she suffered a sprained ankle and was out for two weeks right before the state cross country meet.

The summer before her freshman year in college, IT band syndrome struck her again, this time in the other leg. She was out for another couple of weeks. And then the summer between her freshman and sophomore years in college, the arches in her feet gave her some problems.

Coming off an injury, a runner has to be patient. Jump back into the full swing of training and run the risk of reinjuring themselves. Raunig said that Andrus’ injuries have taught her better communication between her and her body.

“She’s injury-prone,” Raunig said. “She’s learned from the school of hard knocks … to listen to her body. She works hard but then recovers.”

***

Andrus wants to distinguish herself from the stereotypical athlete, the one who cares about his or her sport and nothing else.

“School definitely comes first for me,” Andrus said.

It shows. In the two years Andrus has been competing for UM, she earned two academic All-Big Sky Conference selections. That means that Andrus must have participated in at least half of her team’s competitions and recorded a cumulative grade point average of 3.2 or higher. 

“Brooke is on the ball,” said her photojournalism professor Jeremy Lurgio. “She pursues athletics because it’s a passion of hers. But then she comes to class not rundown, sits in the front row, asks questions, stirs up conversation. I can’t speak highly enough of her.”

On top of a full schedule, during track season, Andrus practices every day at 3:30 p.m. for about an hour to an hour and a half. Plus, she finds her own time to hit the weight room at least twice a week during the season, three times during the off-season. And then there are the meets.

In less than two years of competing for the UM track and cross country programs, Andrus has already left a mark. She placed sixth last year at the Big Sky Conference Championships in the 1,500 meters. She is also part of the distance medley relay team that holds the school record. Raunig said he sees her only improving from here, especially the more she faces high level-runners from bigger and more competitive schools.

“She’ll continue to get better,” Raunig said. “I think she needs to get more opponents in big meets. If she could take advantage of those, she could step it up a notch.”

While the Presidential Scholar works hard in the classroom and excels off the track, the patience from her running and her photography doesn’t always carry over into the classroom.

“When it comes to school, I’m borderline OCD,” Andrus jokes. “I like to get things done quickly. You just can’t procrastinate. You have to get things done when you have time to get them done.”

With a hectic schedule, trying to juggle practices and meets and school all at once, Andrus always wants to get her school work finished as soon as possible so it isn’t looming over her head while competing in a meet.

“There’s nothing worse than going to a competition stressed out from school, because it does affect your performance athletically,” Andrus said. “I just don’t perform well when I’m stressed out. I really try to get the school stuff taken care of on time and not wait until the last minute.”

***

When all of Andrus’ competitive running and college days are over, maybe she’ll be shooting for the sports section of a newspaper. Maybe she will be taking pictures for her favorite magazine, Runner’s World. The future is still out of focus, she said. For now, she is coming into her own as a photographer.

“She’s going to develop her own style,” Lurgio said of her photography. “She’s really in that sweet, ripe spot where she’s going to develop a real vision.”

Whatever she decides to pursue, Andrus will do it with the patience and vision she’s taken from photography and with the endurance and dedication she’s taken from running.

“With running, you really get out of it what you put into it,” Andrus said. “I think that photography is the same. You’re not just going to go out for ten minutes and find that shot. You have to dig deeper. You have to be willing to invest more time in it. It takes time for everything to come together perfectly.”