SAN DIEGO, Calif. – Future Stanford runner Zofia Dudek won the girls' title at the Foot Locker national high school cross country championships on Saturday at Balboa Park.
Dudek, a native of Poland who is a senior at Pioneer High in Ann Arbor, Michigan, captured the 5-kilometer (3.1-mile) race on the hilly Morley Field course in 16:45.0. She signed a letter of intent with Stanford and will be a freshman next fall.
Stanford signees Thomas Boyden of Skyline High in Salt Lake City was 12th (15:34.9) in the boys' race.
Dudek is the latest in a line of Foot Locker girls' champions to go to Stanford. Others are Aisling Cuffe (2010), Kathy Kroeger (2006), Sara Bei (2000), Victoria Chang (1999), Erin Sullivan (1997-98), Julia Stamps (1994), Amanda White (1992), Ceci Hopp (1980) and Ellen Lyons (1979). Also, Grant Fisher (2013-14) was a boys' champion who ran for the Cardinal.
This has been a busy cross country postseason for Dudek, the 2019 Brooks PR Invitational mile winner (4:41.34) and reigning European under-20 3,000 champion.
- On Nov. 2, Dudek won the Michigan Division I title in the third-fastest time in meet history.
- On Nov. 16, she won the Nike Cross Nationals Midwest Regional in Terre Haute, Indiana.
- On Nov. 30, she was second in the Foot Locker Midwest Regional in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
- On Dec. 8, she was fifth at the European Under-20 championships in Lisbon, Portugal.
- On Dec. 15, she won the Foot Locker nationals in San Diego.
Dudek took the lead for good on a downhill section of the course near the three-mile mark and held off her closest competitor over the final few hundred yards.
"It just means the world to me," Dudek said to the Detroit Free Press. "Just coming to this meet meant a lot to me and I was just so happy that I got the chance to finish the season off as great as I could."
On Dec. 7, another Stanford recruit raced in a national competition. Cole Sprout, another Cardinal signee, placed seventh at the Nike Cross Nationals. Sprout, from Colorado's Valor Christian High, ran 15:10.1 on the Glendoveer Golf Course in Portland, Oregon.
Finally, Cuffe, the most recent Stanford runner to win the Foot Locker nationals before Dudek, won the USATF Club Nationals in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, running 20:07 for 6K (3.73 miles).
Zofia Dudek of Poland, via Ann Arbor, Mich., is the first Stanford girls' signee to win the Foot Locker high school nationals since Aisling Cuffe in 2010. Photo by Kirby Lee/Image of Sport.