Heidi Nielson Talks Foot Locker Nationals and Post Season

Katy Cinco Ranch sophomore Heidi Nielson has had an outstanding season. It has been long, but it is not over quite yet. 

Nielson has one more race left to complete this weekend and it has perhaps been the one on her mind since last year.

As a freshman, she qualified for the Foot Locker Cross Country championships for the right to compete against 39 other top distance runners. However, the race did not go according to her desires. Nielson finished in 38th place out of 40 runners in 19:43.40, which was her slowest time of the year.

In time, Nielson recovered from the race and was able to have an outstanding track season. The 2018 cross country season began moderately for Nielson who did not have many fast runs compared to the rest of the state. However, she was able to rack up meet wins week after week.

When championship time came around, Nielson was right there with the best. That enabled her to qualify for the two high school national championships (NXN and Foot Locker).

Last week, she ran a superb race finishing 26th overall out of over 200 of the best runners nationally. She ran her third fastest time of the year in some tough and unusual course and weather conditions.

This weekend, Nielson will have her first opportunity to improve on last year's disappointing Foot Locker championships.

She is riding a wave of momentum as she has dropped her fastest four times of the year, in her last four races. Those four races just so happened to be some of the toughest in the nation.

See what Nielson and coach Dana Mathis, Cinco Ranch head coach had to say about the season and Foot Locker Cross Country championships.