Unmatched local cyclist leaves her legacy in Indy
When the Lawrence family bought a five-person quint bike off the internet for an unusually high amount of money, two-year-old Stephanie, barely as tall as a wheel, struggled to stay on her seat. Her mother had to grab her and put her back on the seat as she nearly fell off the bike with each pedal.
Now 22, Lawrence doesn’t remember this memory, but photos of a smiling Lawrence show her having the time of her life, waving to staring neighbors as the family of five biked past driveways near their Colorado Springs home.
"She would fall asleep on the quint," Lawrence’s father, Jim Lawrence, recalls. "She’d be waving to people and smiling and goofing off. I’m like, ‘Cmon, pedal! We’re going up a mountain!’"
Two decades later, and now much taller than a bike wheel, Lawrence is in her final year as a collegiate cyclist at Marian University. Her journey as a competitor, however, is just getting started as she eyes world championships and the 2028 Olympics.
She’s already won 27 national titles, including five elite titles, competing at the highest level of performance. She just won the collegiate sprint title for the fifth year in a row and helped Marian finish first as a team during Nationals in mid-September.
But Lawrence’s cycling career has almost ended twice, once after a bad crash in her teens and once a few years later when her dedication started to dwindle.
A family legacy of track cycling titles
Some of Lawrence’s first memories on the track are when her parents, who both ride, took their kids to a velodrome in their hometown of Colorado Springs. Lawrence fell in love with riding at the age of four.
Lawrence’s mom has one Masters track title. Her dad has amassed 11 Masters track titles, riding almost as fast as the elite women cyclists in the country. As a child, Lawrence watched her father and the women with whom he trained.
"That’s what I want to be when I grow up," she thought.
When her dad wasn’t racing around the track, the duo would watch races from the infield, analyzing mistakes and discussing race strategies, which Lawrence said has helped her immensely in her cycling career.
Unmatched," her dad said when talking about his daughter’s skills on the bike. "Tactically, she’s better than anyone I’ve ever seen." Because of her strategic riding, she hasn’t had a major crash in years. But at 15, she encountered her biggest physical challenge in her cycling career, one that nearly ended it.
She didn’t want to get back on the bike. But she did
Lawrence was at a track in Colorado Springs, training in the back of the group. Suddenly, she crashed terribly, sustaining a brain bleed, amnesia, massive facial trauma, and road rash all over her body.
After spending three days in the hospital, Lawrence was bedridden for two weeks and had to take various medications to keep her brain functioning.
She was scared to start cycling again after that; she didn’t want to put her family through another potential cycling accident.
"Everything was stiff, everything was sore," she recalls, "I didn’t want to crash again." But she got back on the bike two weeks and one day after the crash, as soon as doctors cleared her to leave her bed.
She wanted to decide when it was time for her career to end, not let a crash make the decision for her.
However, at that point, she was not training intensely. During her high school career, she posted mediocre competition results and describes herself as less focused on the mental game of cycling. The idea of quitting began to seem more appealing.
But then Marian University entered the picture.
Lawrence attended a camp before Juniors Track Nationals in the summer of 2020 at the velodrome in Indianapolis, run by Marian University. She was planning to move to Pennsylvania that fall for college, where she had no plans to join any collegiate team.
When she showed up at Marian and met the coaches and athletes, however, her perspective shifted.
"The way they talked about cycling and talked about being on the team, I wanted to be a part of that," Lawrence said. "It sounded so fun, and they made it sound like cycling was what I wanted it to be again."
Marian cycling director and head coach John Hoopingarner had not considered recruiting her for Marian. But at the camp, Lawrence won him over.
"When we first saw Stephanie, the coaching staff and I looked at ourselves and said, ‘How did we miss this?’" Hoopingarner recalled. "It’s worked out so well to have her on the team." Instead of a Pennsylvania school, she started as a first-year student at Marian that fall, studying mechanical engineering and computer science.
Her college cycling career
Over the past four years, Lawrence has pushed herself to excel both on the track and on the road. In addition to racing on the collegiate level, Lawrence has traveled the world racing for the Star Track Union Cycliste Internationale track team and the Fearless Femme Racing professional road team, sporting head-to-toe-to-bike sponsorships during each race.
A 15-hour drive away from the other four pedalers on that quint bike of her childhood, Lawrence has turned to her teammates and coaches at Marian for guidance. Teammate and boyfriend Fred Meredith helps Lawrence with bike setups and confidence-building.
The two met after Meredith came to the United States from his native country of Wales two years ago to join the Marian cycling team. Meredith, now 20, started racing at 13 after winning a bike in a coloring competition. Now, the two cyclists live together in a house on the west side of Indianapolis, with bikes organized neatly in the basement.
Over the past three seasons, Meredith has watched as Lawrence’s passion for the sport developed even as she maintains her composure.
As a teammate, she’s one of the best people you can have in your corner.",
