'Weini Likes To Run Out Front And You Can't Take That Out Of Her'
Kelati moved to the United States alone in the summer of 2014. Her father passed away when she was young. Her mother and two siblings still live in Eritrea.
She took up residence with her third cousin, Amlesom Teklai, and his wife and three children under the age of four. The family prefers not to talk at length about the living situation or their relatives still in Eritrea.
"That's her story to tell when she's ready," said Gilbert. "She says she wants to write a book one day."
Teklai, a 1997 Foot Locker finalist for West Potomac High School in Virginia, immediately sought a running mentor for his prodigious cousin. Enter Gilbert.
About a month and a half into the 2014 cross country season, Teklai approached the 11-year veteran coach, a former middle distance specialist at East Tennessee University.
"She's in pretty good shape," Teklai told Gilbert. "She's been running, she got here from Oregon."
At first, Gilbert did not understand what that meant.
"It took me a little while to realize the World Championships were in Oregon," Gilbert said. "I quickly Googled her name and quickly sprinted inside to my athletic director."
At first her practice, a fartlek workout at the Oatlands Plantation course in Leesburg, Va., Kelati ran circles around the team's No. 1 male runner - who was a respectable, consistent 16:30s performer for 5K.
Gilbert was not sure what to make of this foreign wunderkind. It was hard enough to talk to her.
"The first day of practice was very interesting because when I was trying to explain what we were doing, I was doing everything you shouldn't be doing - speaking loudly, waving my hands," he said.
"I bought what I thought was a good dictionary... it was not very good."
Obvious language barriers aside, the more difficult transition to America for Kelati may have been the switch in training philosophy.
She won her first five races for Heritage but did not feel like herself on a drastically reduced mileage program. In Eritrea, Kelati ran about 80 to 90 mile weeks as a 17-year-old, typically at paces in the low six-minutes per mile range on non-hard long run days. An injury-conscious - or, simply American-minded - Gilbert sought to turn things down a notch in terms of mileage and pace.
He limited her to 55 miles per week and put restrictions on pace by labeling certain days as "easy days" with a requisite jog.
The program was not a problem until later in the season when Kelati faced Libby Davidson; the then-sophomore from E.C. Glass High School defeated Kelati at both the region and state championship meets, where she set the still-standing Virginia state meet course record of 17:12 for 5K. Kelati ran 17:38; the second-fastest time across all six classifications.
Davidson went on to place sixth at Foot Locker Nationals as the top underclassman. Kelati, hoping for a top 15 finish, faded to 20th place after starting with the leaders.
"Her fitness level was there for a top 15 finish had she run the race correctly," Gilbert said. "But Weini likes to run out front and you can't take that out of her."
Had she settled into a more even-paced rhythm, she likely would have accomplished her All-American goal. But that's not how she runs.
"The first mile, I ran with the really fast girls," she said. "They were not tired after one mile and the fastest [girls] - they passed me."
The San Diego experience and the cross country season would later stand out as the peak of her athletic year. She placed seventh at New Balance Nationals Indoor in the 5K with a sub-17 minute effort (16:59.58). Everything seemed to move in slow motion once she hit the spring track season. 
She managed just 9:56.81 for 3K to place ninth in the High School Girls 3K at The Penn Relays Carnival. That's two 5:22 miles. Hardly a year prior, Kelati had raced the equivalent of two back-to-back 4:58 miles at the World Juniors 3K.
"Last track season, I think she would describe it as frustrating," Gilbert said. "She didn't completely make the connection until Penn Relays. It was the first time she ran the 3K and not the 3200m and that was the first time she realized the time she was running."
The state meet was worse: runner-up in the 3200m in 10:54.45, third in the 1600m in 5:16.95. Davidson won both races.
While the other student-athletes rode home with parents, Gilbert and Kelati spent the two hour bus ride from Harrisonburg back to Loudon Valley trying to figure out what went wrong.
"What's worked for you in the past? What changes do we need to make to get you to those goals?" Gilbert asked his young star.
"And from then on, we created her training for the summer."
