It was a delicate, potentially offensive, question, perhaps better left unasked. But the meteoric rise of the NAU women’s cross country and track programs during Annika Reiss’ five-year tenure, as well as Reiss’ individual concomitant rise, makes you wonder:
Would the NAU of 2024 even recruit a runner such as the teenaged Annika Reiss of 2019?
Make no mistake: Reiss was a fine prep prospect, a multiple state champion out of Bellingham, Wash., a 23rd-place finisher at the Footlocker Nationals as a junior, someone that the University of Washington and University of Portland actively recruited.
No high school slouch, she.
But such is the leveling up of NAU’s women’s teams that the program now attracts the upper echelon of prep runners and, via the transfer portal, the NCAA’s top existing talent as well.
So, would the high-school Annika make the cut?
Reiss smiled. With five years of experience as a Lumberjack behind her and her legacy as a major contributor to the team secure, Reiss, 23, can look back with a measure of realistic hindsight and perspective. After all, as a fifth-year senior, she holds her current self to a higher standard, too, and is looking forward to a post-collegiate professional career.
“I’m not offended at all,” she said in answer one recent afternoon before practice, a down week before this weekend’s Big Sky Outdoor Track Championships in Bozeman, Mont. “It is interesting how the level of recruits coming in has changed. I do think they would have me on the team now, because (NAU associate head coach Jarred) Cornfield does a really good job of finding runners with potential, who can get better with time.
“But I don’t think I’d be super high up on the list these days, because everybody wants to come here now, whereas when I came it was still very much a building program. A lot of the top high schoolers do look at who is ranked the highest, so it’s hard to get those recruits when you weren’t up in the rankings.”
A major reason the NAU women has ascended to such heights, finishing second by a single point to North Carolina State in last fall’s NCAA Cross Country Championships?
Yup, Annika Reiss.
In a way, Reiss’ NAU career mirrors the women’s program as a whole.
“They said, don’t look at our results (now). I remember (Coach Mike) Smith saying, ‘The women’s team is going to make history while you’re here.’
Annika Reiss on being recruited in 2019 by NAU
She arrived in Flagstaff in the fall of 2019 with potential, if not eye-popping prep times, and, year-by-year, gained strength and speed, confidence and conviction, her results reflecting that progress. So, too, did the women’s team, in toto, going from failing to make the nationals for several years before 2019 to coming within a few seconds of toppling NC State’s cross-country dynasty last November.
It’s funny and perhaps a little ironic, she recalls now, that NAU coaches Mike Smith and Cornfield had to do a hard sell on her to commit to the program back then.
“NAU was the first school that reached out to me, going into junior year of high school,” she said. “I didn’t know that much about them and my dad, was like, ‘Oh, I think their guys team is really good, you should keep emailing them.’”
Yes, at the time and until very recently, the dynastic NAU men have cast a long shadow over the unheralded women.
“They kind of had to convince me,” Reiss said of NAU’s recruiting pitch. “Like, they said, don’t look at our results (now). I remember Smith saying, ‘The women’s team is going to make history while you’re here.’ Looking at the guy’s team having so much success, I think everyone thought it was possible for the women’s team. They just had to build the program.”
Build it and they will come, the cliché goes.
And now, in her final few weeks as a collegian, Reiss is ready to show just how far she has come. She is far from peaking, though. In fact, so steady has been Reiss’ improvement over the years that she will, like many former Lumberjack men, continue her career as a pro to see just how high her performance ceiling goes.
First, though, Reiss has her sights set on helping NAU win yet another Big Sky outdoor track title and, individually, advance out of the NCAA regionals and cap for career at nationals in Eugene, Ore., presumably in her best event, the 5,000 meters.
In this time of reflection, closing the collegiate chapter, Reiss points not to any specific individual or team results as most memorable; rather, it’s the team cohesion and relationships, especially the past two years, that will linger far after her competitive days conclude.
Not that there aren’t tangible accomplishments to which Reiss can point. There was her 13th place overall finish last November in the cross-country nationals, or her qualifying for the nationals during the 2023 indoor season, or her race late last month at the Payton Jordan Invitational at Stanford, where she nearly broke a 20-year-old school record in the 5,000 meters by running 15:33.21.
Moments, not medals, are what will endure.
Like, for instance, the giddy excitement the team felt last October at the finish line of the Nuttycombe Invitational in Wisconsin, where all five NAU runners (including Reiss) cracked the top 20 finishers to hand mighty NC State a stunning 43-point loss.
“I remember the feeling of watching all of us finish real close together and celebrating, and then then our ‘B’ team runners coming over to celebrate,” she said. “It’s hard to put into words, the feeling.”
Like something of a Hollywood movie montage, there are quieter, less public, moments of team bonding she’ll remember, too: hard double-threshold or interval workouts or road-trip downtime. And, even, she will remember fondly the disappointments, such as the one-point loss to NC State at nationals.
“We go through it all together,” she said. “These last couple of years, the team has gotten really close. One of the biggest differences (in the evolution of the women’s program) differences is that the culture has grown so much. The performance does come from that. Now, we’re more of a cohesive group. That’s the main reason we’ve gotten so much better.
“Obviously, cross country is not an individual sport at all; you’re doing it for the team. I mean, you can pretend you’re doing it for the team and really doing it for yourself, but that truly was not the case at all these past couple of years. We’ve been so close, going towards our goals together. Each year, we’ve definitely taken a step forward.”
The same can be said for Reiss’ performance.
In 2019, as a freshman, she didn’t crack the top seven. In 2020, the Covid year, she placed 196th at the nationals, NAU’s seventh runner. In 2021, she did not compete. In 2022, she placed 47th overall, NAU’s second runner on a team that finished sixth. And in 2023, she was 15th overall, second on the team.
Her race last year could serve as a microcosm of Reiss’ time at NAU. She started (relatively) slowly, in 35th place after 1K. By 3K, she inched up to 27th. By 4K, 23rd. By 5K, 20th. Then, in the final kilometer, knowing NAU and NC State were neck and neck, Reiss recorded her fastest split, 3:10.04, to move up to 15th place.
“That was a good race,” Reiss said modestly. “Gracelyn (Larkin, who finished 13th) and I worked together picking people off. I remember with maybe 1K to go, the coaches were yelling at us that we were eight (points) behind and so we just started aiming to pick off runners.”
In her breakthrough late April 5,000 meters at Stanford, a huge personal best, Reiss employed the same tactics. Start steady, gradually move up and then kick it in.
“In that race,” she said, “I just kind of got in a line behind some talented runners and motivating myself in my mind, just stay in that pack. I shut my brain off and stayed on the train, but then the train got smaller and smaller. I happened to have something left at the end. I had the fastest split at the end of the race – 67 (seconds over the last 400 meters).”
As impressive as that performance was, Reiss believes she can eclipse that. Last year, she failed to advance out of the outdoor regionals in the 5K, finishing 16th in 15:57.86 – which was well off her PR last year.
“I just didn’t have it at the end last year,” she said of the 5,000 at regionals. “Part of it was having such a good indoor season, going so hard for so long. This year’s been the opposite. I had a bad indoor season – I got sick with pneumonia – so I got a break and it’ll play well into this (outdoor) season. I’m building right now at the perfect time.”
Smith is known for his gradual nurturing of distance running talent, and Reiss credits his patience with her latter-day success.
“I definitely think I’m still improving a lot, each race,” she said. “He does a great job building the mileage and the intensity, the workouts. I feel like I’m still getting better. The speed comes from the strength. I’ve built a lot of strength over the years, building mileage and training at altitude.”
She seems almost embarrassed to discus the Annika of freshman year.
“I was just super excited to be here and motivated to be on a college team,” she recalled. “It took a while to get used to the altitude, the program and training. I think Coach Smith did a good job of easing me into it. He didn’t just throw me in. He started with my mileage really low. It was my idea to race (as a freshman). Since Covid happened (and runners were given a fifth year of eligibility), it was a good thing I had a fifth year. It ended up working out.”
Reiss doesn’t like to look too far ahead in the future, but a pro career is on her radar. She has an elementary education degree and now is in the first of a two-year Masters program. Eventually, she wants to be a teacher. But her running won’t be over after the NCAAs in June.
Her Masters program at NAU is online, so she could complete her advanced degree anywhere, meaning if Reiss decides to train with groups in, say, Colorado, or Oregon or North Carolina, she has that option.
But, of course, there are no less than six training groups in Flagstaff alone – one of which, though not affiliated with a shoe company, is coached by Smith – so she might just stay here.
“I like Flagstaff,” she said. “Arizona was a little out of my comfort zone when I first got here, but Flagstaff is similar (to Bellingham, a small college town) and so is the running community – though there’s more elites here.”
There may be one more real soon.
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