May 2025 ~
The first time Christy Lacey-Krietz MacColl (Lincoln, 1996) lined up for a competitive 800-meter race, her plan was simple: follow the leader.
Maybe not a plan that would have been endorsed by many track coaches, but it would have been tough for MacColl to get much more strategic than that in a sport she knew little about prior to being told she’d be going out for the Cardinal team her freshman year.
She had just finished her first basketball season at Lincoln which followed her first year of soccer. Now it was spring and MacColl was sports-less and thinking maybe she’d give tennis a try. But that wasn’t going to work for her good friend (and future fellow PIL Hall of Famer), Marie Davis.
“After basketball season, Marie asked me what I planned to do in the spring,” MacColl remembers. “I told her I was thinking about going out for tennis. I didn’t really play it, but thought it would be fun to try a new sport. Marie said, ‘No, you’re going out for track with me.’ I said ‘OK.’ I didn’t really know what track involved, but I was willing to give it a shot.”
At least MacColl knew how to run. That was something she’d been doing in soccer since fourth grade and in basketball since she took up the sport at West Sylvan Middle School.
“I was always interested in sports but wasn’t exposed to them much until I got on a soccer field, and then I had an absolutely blast,” she says. “Then I started playing basketball and that was so fun too. I just loved competing, sprinting and running and playing defense being scrappy, I guess.”
MacColl made a smooth transition into high-school competition at Lincoln, where she was the only freshman to make the Cardinals’ soccer team, then played for the freshman and junior varsity basketball teams.
But while running up and down fields and courts may be good for one’s endurance, it’s not the same as running against experienced track athletes like, say, the Wilson High twins MacColl lined up with in that inaugural 800m race of hers.
“They were a year ahead of me, but I had been aware they were good runners in middle school,” she remembers. “My plan was just to follow them around the track and see if I could hang with them. I was able to do that on the first lap, then halfway through the second lap I heard someone yell, ‘Sprint!’ So, I just started sprinting and was able to hold on to the finish line without dying.”
MacColl didn’t just hold on. She won. Encouraged by those results—the winning and the not dying things—she “took off from there,” finding immediate success. As a freshman she won the first of her four straight PIL 800-meter championships, made it to the state finals and ran the fastest time in the state for her age group.
By then, the sport she knew little about just a few months earlier had become her favorite.
MacColl played soccer again as a sophomore, earning 1st Team All-PIL and 2nd Team All-State honors in the process, feats made even more impressive considering she was also running cross-country in the same season.
“I’d play a soccer game then zoom over to the cross-country meet,” she says. “I absolutely loved being a multi-sport athlete but, along with academics, it was a lot to juggle.”
While fear of injury led MacColl to give up soccer after her sophomore year, she lettered three years in cross-country, winning the PIL championship as a senior.
“I had seen some teammates tearing ACLs and was nervous I might get injured too, so I decided to focus more on running,” she says.
MacColl still had plenty to keep her busy through high school. As a sophomore, she became the starting point guard for Lincoln’s girls varsity basketball team, a role she held onto for three years, culminating senior year with 1st Team All-PIL and 2nd Team All-Tourney honors for her play in the state playoffs.
On the track, MacColl’s success continued. In addition to her four 800m PIL titles, she finished second in the state as a sophomore and junior before claiming the championship her senior year, helping the Cardinals (along with her friend Davis’ 1500m and 3000m titles) win the 1995 team title.
By the end of her year, MacColl had turned her running skills into a partial scholarship from Stanford. The prestigious university had caught her eye several years earlier, but she never dreamed she might one day be attending it, let alone competing for it.
“When I was younger, I watched an amazing documentary about one of the Stanford womens basketball teams that (legendary coach) Tara VanDerveer led to a national championship,” MacColl remembers. “I fell in love with the team and coach. Then I went on a recruiting trip and fell in love with the school and was hoping and praying I could get into it. It was an exciting day when I got my acceptance letter, and I never took one day of college for granted.”
Though she earned four letters in both track and cross-country, MacColl says she enjoyed her college years more for the overall experience than for the athletic component.
“I absolutely loved my time at Stanford,” she says. “And the running piece was fun, but not as joyful as what I had experienced in high school. At Lincoln, I was used to playing multiple sports and being excited for the next season. The moment one season ended, I would kind of have to reorient my brainhang the cleats up and put basketball shoes on, take the basketball shoes off and put spikes on. That kept sports fresh and provided a mental break. At Stanford, I wasn’t going to sacrifice my overall college experience for the sake of being this intense, hyper-focused, ultra-athlete. I wanted to be an athlete but also to experience everything the university offered.”
After earning her degree, MacColl stayed in the San Francisco area, working in a venture capital firm and, eventually, meeting her future husband, E.K., who coincidentally had been two years ahead of MacColl at West Sylvan. He was passing through town with a longtime friend of MacColl’s on his way to business school at the University of Oregon. The two wound up in a long-distance relationship until she moved back to Oregon and enrolled at the UO with plans to pursue a master’s degree in teaching.
“I was trying to figure out what I was put on earth to do, to figure where my passions lay and how best to use them,” MacColl recalls.
While she loved the idea of being a teacher and coach, MacColl left the UO program over other concerns about the profession. After taking a short-term job back down in the Bay Area coordinating Nike’s inaugural women’s marathon, then spending three years in Portland as the marketing manager for Danner and LaCrosse Footwear, MacColl decided it was time to pursue a dream she’d had for years.
“I’d always wanted to work with my mom (Claudia McNeil), who was a realtor for 20 years,” she says. “She told me when I was young that I was welcome to join her, but she wanted me to cut my teeth in the business world first.”
Having done that, MacColl joined her mother in 2006 and was able to work with her for five years until Claudia was diagnosed with ALS.
“She passed in 2017, but she is still with us 100 percent in spirit,” MacColl says.
The ‘us’ MacColl refers to includes her younger sister, Carrie Gross, who has worked in the family business, Portland City Properties, since 2012.
“Carrie and I have an almost twin-like relationship,” MacColl says. “We ran together at Lincoln. We work together now. She lives about two blocks away from me and our kids are the same age.”
MacColl has three children. None are runners but they all play multiple sports, which means Mom’s still running figuratively even though she no longer does literally. And she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I love it so much,” she says of her kids’ involvement in sports while adding that she also helps coach one of her daughter’s soccer teams. “I just get so much joy out of it because sports brought me such joy.”
MacColl says she had the same emotion when she learned she’d been inducted into the PIL Hall of fame in 2015.
“It was definitely a proud moment and a big honor, and I feel grateful I was inducted before Mom got really sick,” she says. “She was my No. 1 fan, so it was very special that she was at the induction ceremony along with my whole family. I don’t know if I could have accomplished what I did without their support.”
Do you know Christy Lacey-Krietz MacColl? If you’d like to reconnect, she can be reached at [email protected]
~ Profile written by Dick Baltus (Wilson, 1973)
CyberMuseum bio:
