As a kid, just messing around, Olivia Baker would race other students, girls and boys, on the playground.
Did she win?
“Most of the time, yes,” she said with a bashful giggle.
Some things don’t change.
Baker is a senior at Flagstaff High School now, and she’s still beating competitors, this time on the cross country course.
Saturday at the Cave Creek Golf Course in Phoenix, Baker will try to lead the Eagles girls’ team to the AIA Division 2 state title after a second place finish a year ago. Individually, Baker is considered the favorite to be the overall winner, based on her victory last week in the Sectionals and her performance throughout the season.
No one really is surprised by Baker’s ascension to among the top female prep runners in the state – except maybe Baker herself. Flagstaff coach Trina Painter has witnessed Bakers’ progression from her freshman year on the varsity and praised Baker’s consistency and leadership skills.
Baker, though, seems kind of astonished by how all this has turned out.
She said he got into running because her two older siblings, Sonya and Troy, both ran at Flagstaff High and because, well, it seemed fun to continue outrunning competitors from elementary school into middle school at Mount Elden Middle School to high school.
Now, she has competitors from Tucson to Page and all over the greater Phoenix area gunning for her, and she’s had a few college coaches contact Painter and Baker’s mother, Jeanette, wondering about her future running plans.
Could she have imagined such a scenario four years ago as a freshman?
“I knew I was going to Flag High, I just didn’t know whether I was going to run,” she said before practice earlier this week. “It was just coming out of Covid. So I didn’t have a lot of motivation to run, really.
“My parents were trying to get me into it. I ended up joining when I went to camp my freshman year. Camp Colton, in the summer. I was having fun.”
Fun is the operative word for Baker. Yeah, there’s a familial connection, since her brother ran four years on the Eagles varsity and her sister ran on the JV team and dad Ryan is an avid runner. But “fun” actually may be one of the main reasons she had come so far so fast. She exudes optimism and positive vibes around her teammates.
Case in point: On the starting line last week at the Division 2 Sectionals in Glendale, most teams looked down and scuffed their spikes, or bounced nervously up and down in their starting boxes, awaiting the instructions before the gun went off. Baker, though, did a little dance and got a couple of teammates to join in, briefly, before getting down to business and easily taking the team title.
“I try to (keep it light) because I know a lot of our people on our team when they get nervous, they go quiet,” she said. “So, I like to try to encourage them. But I also got to work on my own mindset before the race, too.”
Now that she is the Eagles’ lead runner – junior Taylor Biggambler has been close behind recently and won races earlier this year – Baker perhaps dances on the start line to distract herself. She admits to feeling some pressure going into the state meet. People’s expectations of her are higher, as are her self-expectations.
But she seems to be handling the stress well.
“I’m definitely more nervous about this one (race) than the others,” Baker said. “It’s state, and there are big possibilities coming up. It’s a mental process for me just to get through it this entire week.”
Well, she made it through the stress of an interview with a reporter, right?
“Exactly,” she said, laughing.
Ask Painter about what was the tipping point for Baker as a runner, and she points to Bakers’ feet.
“We had to find the right shoes for her,” Painter said earlier this season. “She has a distinct running style.”
Baker explained: “I’m a toe runner and actually a toe walker, too, so I have a lot of feet issues. That causes some (injury) issues. Freshman year, it took a while to figure out which shoes would be best and what to wear when racing. It didn’t really change until sophomore year when I got good racing shoes. The shoes I had didn’t have enough padding for the front of my foot.”
Improper footwear, Baker said, may have been the cause of foot tendinitis that dogged her as a freshman in track. She said the problem occasionally still pops up, but she’s got it under control.
As a freshman, Baker made the varsity and, by the end of the season, was the Eagles’ fifth runner. She steadily improved as a sophomore and, last fall as a junior, was a solid second behind Biggambler almost all season. And, in last November’s state meet, with Biggambler hampered by an illness, Baker stepped up and finished third overall, behind only seniors from Millennium and Campo Verde highs.
Last week, at the Sectionals, Baker pulled away from all competitors after the first mile and beat runner-up Taelyn Janssen of Canyon View High by 16 seconds.
“It’s been a learning experience every year,” Baker said. “Not until this year did I realize that I can actually do certain things and race in a certain way. I think it was more of a mental battle. Physically, I just figured I was going to have to put up with it (pain of racing) because it’s normal.”
Another factor, Baker said, in her rise: her diet.
“Yeah, I’m eating better,” she said. “I’m going to compare it to last year. Last year, I wasn’t eating breakfast and lunch. I’d only eat one meal a day, and that’s not healthy at all. I’ve gotten better. Breakfast, I still struggle with, but I’ve been eating lunch/ every day. It’s really helped. It’s not so much what I had been eating, it’s just getting it in the system.
“I’ve gotten more muscle and I’ve lost a little weight, too, not a ton, since (freshman year). Just a couple of pounds. But I haven’t grown in height, sadly. I’m like, 5-2 and ¾.”
Again, the nervous giggle.
Her success has Baker reevaluating her future plans. She had not been planning on going to college and instead was thinking about training to be a licensed esthetician.
“I’m not quite sure,” she said when asked about next year. “I was thinking recently about just doing a year of college to run on a team maybe, and see how it goes, explore a little bit. That’s because I wasn’t super big on college before. We’ll see. A couple of (college) coaches have contacted coach (Painter) and my mom.”
For now, though, Baker isn’t looking beyond Saturday’s finals and the possibility of another state title.
“It’s definitely something we’ve been talking about, and coach says we have a big chance this year,” she said. “This year, it’d be fun to win one again.”
AIA State Cross Country Schedule
All four Flagstaff high schools — Flagstaff and Coconino (Division 2) and Northland Prep and Basis (Division 4) — will compete in both the girls and boys races at the AIS State Cross Country Meet at Cave Creek Golf Course, 15202 N. 19th Avenue, Phoenix. Here is the schedule involving local teams:
- Division 4 Boys, 12:45 p.m.
- Division 2 Girls, 1:10 p.m.
- Division 4 Girls, 1:35 p.m.
- Division 2 Boys, 2 p.m.
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