Sydney Thorvaldson Speaks With LetsRun.com After Being Named 2020-21 Gatorade National Girls Cross Country Player of the Year
April 15, 2021
The 2020 high school cross country season was unlike any in recent memory. Several states did not hold competitions last fall. The Foot Locker Cross Country Championships and Nike Cross Nationals, the two biggest meets of the year, were cancelled. And, for the first time since 2014,
Katelyn Tuohy was not running high school races.
Despite all that, we witnessed some incredible performances. On November 15,
Sydney Thorvaldson of Rawlins, Wyo., ran 16:38 to win the XC Town USA Meet of Champions in Terre Haute by a massive 40 seconds. A week later, at the RunningLane Cross Country Championships, another meet that sprung up to fill the FL/NXN void,
For Rawlins High School senior Sydney Thorvaldson, the state cross country meet back in October did not mark the end of her season. Throvaldson kept training and added two additional, national meets to her schedule in 2020.
She picked up an impressive win in mid-November at the XC Town USA Meet of Champions in Indiana. And, most recently, she added another gold medal to her collection with a commanding win at the High School Cross Country National Invite in Lubbock, Texas on Dec. 5th.
The win in Lubbock did mark the final time Thorvaldson would run in a cross country meet as a high schooler. Her first place finish was the exclamation point on an astounding prep cross country career.