SBHS graduate continues training at high altitudes
When former San Benito High School track and cross country star
Amanda Boyd first arrived at Northern Arizona University last
August she was homesick and didn’t know how she would fare against
the other top athletes that attend the small NCAA Division I school
in Flagstaff, Arizona.
SBHS graduate continues training at high altitudes
When former San Benito High School track and cross country star Amanda Boyd first arrived at Northern Arizona University last August she was homesick and didn’t know how she would fare against the other top athletes that attend the small NCAA Division I school in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Today, Boyd has proved that she was not only worthy of her full-ride scholarship but that she is a strong enough runner to make the school’s travel squads in both sports programs.
Next weekend, the former all-league athlete in high school, who finished second in the Central Coast Section in both cross-country and in track and field’s 1,600m and 3,200m races, will begin the outdoor track season with the NAU Lumberjacks.
“I’m doing a lot better than I originally thought I would do,” said Boyd. “Since I’m a freshman the girls are older and they were way ahead of me, but I’ve been improving. When I first got here, it was so, so stressful. I wondered how I would fit in with the team. And it was really cold here, too. It snows here.”
Boyd started the school year as the 10th ranked player on the school’s depth chart and excelled at her craft so quickly that by the end of her third week on campus she found out that she had made the school’s elite seven-member cross country travel team.
By the end of the cross-country season she had moved up to hold onto the No. 5 runner spot on the team.
What was equally impressive is that Boyd’s was putting up such strong times on a campus that is situated 7,000 feet above sea level. And not only that, she was now excelling in races that were nearly a mile longer than the ones that she ran in high school – and she was able to handle the grueling college training schedule to boot.
“It is overwhelming coming from high school to what we do now,” Boyd said. “In high school, we would run about 8 miles a week for cross country practice. Here, we run 60 miles a week and build up to 70 miles a week. That’s what I’m doing right now.”
On Sunday mornings alone, the 5-foot-8 distance specialist runs 14 miles along the school’s seemingly endless trails that snake its way through the neighboring mountains.
The hardest thing to get used to was training at such a high elevation.
“It’s difficult even walking up stairs here,” Boyd said. “It really gets you winded. You really realize when you’re lifting weights.”
At lower elevations, she really notices the difference.
“The other weekend we ran in Phoenix. I could run so much better and it felt a lot better,” she said.
But that’s not to say that training at a high elevation doesn’t have a huge advantage. In fact, the high elevation combined with the school’s large number of trails has attracted a number of Olympic hopefuls to the campus.
“They train up here all of the time,” Boyd said. “One girl was just here training for the Olympic trials.”
Another thing Boyd had to get used to be the races themselves. At high school cross-country dual meets she might have eight other runners to beat. In college, she has gone up against some 200 girls in a single race, which can make things real crowded.
“I enjoy the competitiveness most of all. At first, (in high school) I never thought I would run cross-country. I thought it would be boring,” said Boyd, who also excelled at volleyball and youth softball prior to her junior year. “Now I’m addicted to running. I like it because it’s something that you can do yourself. It’s satisfying for me and it allows me to focus on individual accomplishments.”
She first got into running because of her God-given abilities. In high school, she remembered being sent in to pinch-run for someone during softball games, and always being faster than everyone else in whatever sport she played.
By the end of her sophomore year at San Benito High, she excelled so much in running the 800m race on the track team that she was encouraged by her coaches to not only continue running but that running could be her ticket to a scholarship. And that leads up to where she is today.
Now that the Lumberjacks’ cross-country season is long over, the main focus now is on the upcoming outdoor track season.
Most recently she has been training to compete in an event that she hasn’t been in before: The steeple chase.
The steeple chase is a track event that incorporates five hurdles as well as the crossing of a water barrier into the running event.
“I had never done hurdles before but now I like it,” Boyd said. “At first it was so frustrating. I couldn’t get over a hurdle to save my life.”
Her first race in that event is going to take place in Phoenix in two weeks. She will also compete in the 1,500m as well as the 5k event.
When not on the track, Boyd can be found on campus working on her general education work while pursuing her bachelor’s degree in Political Science.
“After that, I want to get into corporate law, be a lawyer,” she said. “I want to go back East to school for that. My mom is from Massachusetts and I want to go somewhere out in that area.”
But for now the only thing she’ll be focusing on is her running.
John Bagley can be reached at
jb*****@pi**********.com
.
