This freshman endures intense workouts and emerges as a star in Obstacle Course Racing

For her toughest workouts, 15-year-old Ransom Everglades basketball player Kathryn Serra doesn’t need a gym.

She just takes the stairs to the top of her family’s Key Biscayne apartment building — 27 flights up and then 27 flights down — repeating the cycle six times while wearing a weighted vest.

To add to her degree of difficulty, Serra sprints up and back, skipping one step with each movement. She then mixes it up and hops all the way up to the top floor on her right leg, and then she does the same with her left.

When she’s done with her workout — which she completes in less than one hour — the sweat-drenched Serra takes the elevator up to the 15th floor where she lives, often drawing quizzical looks from neighbors who have no idea why she is gasping for air.

Once she gets on the basketball court, Serra — a 5-7, 140-pound guard and the only freshman on the Ransom varsity — is a relentless defender.

“She’s the only girl I’m never worried about getting tired,” Ransom coach Joe Supple said. “She always finishes first in every sprint. Her conditioning is second to none, and she pushes her teammates, raising their level.”

But basketball is not a sport Serra plans on playing in college.

Serra played tackle football against boys, including her younger brother, Chuli, all the way through middle school, starring at right guard and defensive end. Her youth-league football team was called the Key Rats.

Her passion, however, is obstacle-course racing, also known as OCR. Organized OCR began in the late 1980s and has grown to where there are now more than six million enthusiasts and professionals.

OCR, which is under discussion for inclusion in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, requires a significant amount of running, and that’s something Serra grew to love after watching her dad, David, who used to jog from Key Biscayne to the location of his children’s youth-league football games. When the team won the first time he did it, superstition demanded that David continued running, and, for one game, he jogged about 20 miles all the way to Hialeah.

“It became like a ritual,” said David, who was a doctor in his native Cuba and is now a nurse practitioner. “I used to leave my house at 5 a.m. so I could have time to run to the games.”

David no longer does those runs or the three races he did to the top of the 55-story Southeast Financial Center building in downtown Miami.

But his love for running inspired his daughter, who won her age division in her very first half-marathon. She was 12.

That eventually led her to discover OCR, and, in late September, she won her age division (14-17) in the Spartan Race World Championships in Lake Tahoe, California.

“I admire Kathryn’s strength and determination,” said her mother, Laura, who is a speech-language pathologist. “I think that’s what takes people far in life.”

Aside from determination, Serra also uses a bit of superstition, usually competing in her lucky black shorts. But in Lake Tahoe, due to freezing temperatures, she opted for warm-up pants and layered tops.

The course was roughly 13 miles over rocky, slippery and mountainous terrain.

In addition, there were 39 obstacles to overcome, such as rope climbing and rock scaling. There were numerous monkey bar-type obstacles, a spear-throwing component, and, for a 200-yard trip up and down a mountain, Serra was required to carry two 50-pound sandbags, one with each hand.

“At that point,” Serra said, “I saw so many people crying and calling for the car to take them out of the race.”

There were no tears for Serra, who said the toughest part of the race was the 200-yard swim — not for the length of the dip in the lake but because temperatures were estimated at 30 degrees with a wind-chill factor of 14.

“There were [Spartan race] pros who couldn’t handle that, and they dropped out,” Serra said. “I had to take my layers off, and it took a minute to get my life-vest on because I was trembling due to the cold.”

Serra persevered, and she plans to continue with OCR.

A Miami native, Serra recently took up rowing and sees that as her possible ticket to a college scholarship. But she aspires to attend a university in the northern half of the country, something with mountains, which will help in her OCR training.

Either that, or a college that has a tall building with lots of stairs.

This story was originally published December 23, 2019 at 1:54 PM.