Phoebe Morss, an eighth grader at the Wayland Middle School, capped off an impressive cross-country season with a gold medal at the AAU Junior Olympics National Cross-Country Championships in Orlando, Florida on December 5.
Morss went undefeated this year in dual meets running for her middle school team. After the middle school season ended she continued training and competing with the Nitehawks Sports Club. In addition to her middle school victories, the young runner also had impressive victories at the Mayors’ Cup in Boston and the Wayland XC Festival.
She first started running as a fifth grader living in London, England. After moving to Wayland in the summer of her sixth grade year, she joined the Nitehawks for cross-country and track. In her first year with the team she earned All-American honors with an eleventh place finish at the cross-country nationals. Last year she had growth-related injuries that prevented her from training hard. This year she was determined to make it back to nationals and perform well there.
Morss travelled to Florida for the Amateur Athletic Union’s national championship event. The cross-country race for her age group is four kilometers, approximately 2.5 miles. The course at the Disney Wide World of Sports complex is flat and fast. But torrential rains the night before the race made the course muddy and slow.
In the early going, Morss was joined by four other runners in the lead pack. By the time they reached the first mile marker, the lead pack had shrunk to three runners with Kelsie Morgan of Michigan out front. The lead changed hands a few times over the next half mile and then Morss decided to take control and push the pace.
Coach Eric Bucher said that this was part of the plan. “Phoebe is a fierce competitor and she likes to run out front. “ He went on to say that front-running has its risks, “but we talked about her strength and her ability to force her competitors to try to keep up.” They decided that if the opportunity came up and she felt good that she should take the lead and go for it.
And that is exactly what she did, opening up a 20 yard lead with a quarter mile to go. But then the competition began to close in. Morss pushed to the finish and held on for the win by a slim margin of less than one second. Asked if she knew how close it was, Morss said, “No, but I knew that I had to run as hard as I could at the end of the race to hold off the other girls.”
Coach Bucher commented, “I am so happy for Phoebe. She worked hard for this and ran a smart, gutsy race. She showed a lot of heart in the home stretch. And now she is a national champion.”
