The best girls cross country runner in the Four Corners region of Central Florida never had any plans to run at all. Two years ago she had never been on a cross country course and never gave it a second thought.
Still, after finally discovering the sport, you can find Alyssa Rangel running around the South Lake High School campus almost every morning at 6:30 a.m., about an hour after waking up in the darkness of Groveland.
Rangel, a senior at South Lake who garnered a 16th place finish at the Class AA state championship in Tampa last November last, returns for her senior year hoping her work pays off. Even if her hard work, the early mornings, don't result in a state title, Rangel said it will reap huge benefits later this year when she and her South Lake soccer teammates go after a state title of their own.
Cross country running was just a way for Rangel to get in shape for soccer season, she said. The sport had always run under the radar for Rangel until she was convinced that the only way to improve on the seven goals she scored as a sophomore would be to make her stronger and faster down the stretch, having that extra step when it counted. Rangel scored 23 goals in her junior year, so it all paid off.
"The reason I took up cross country was to get in shape for soccer,'' Rangel said. "I didn't think much about cross country until I started breaking some records with my times and I realized I was pretty good at it.''
Early in her first season running cross country, she broke the South Lake school mark in one of the first events of the season. It wasn't bad for someone who only weeks before was just trying to keep up with her teammates.
"At first, I didn't really know what I was doing,'' Rangel said. "I just followed my teammates the best I could and then I started passing them. I started to like it and never want to stop. By the time soccer season started, I was in my best shape and I realized I loved running cross country.''
As her junior year moved on, Rangel began to commit more time to cross country and now thinks that cross country is wherever her future is. She is ranked No. 1 in her class for academics, so she has her choice of colleges. Notre Dame is at the top of the list and, while she would like to see her soccer career continue – her parents are from Mexico and she and her family are die-hard soccer fans – she feels like she's found her niche in cross country and hopes to run for Notre Dame.
Another thing Rangel learned during her foray into cross country was that she feels running is a metaphor for life. As she runs the South Lake campus early in the morning, while the dew on the ground hasn\'t dried and there is still a full day of classes ahead, Rangel said she tries to compare her running with life itself.
"Everything about life is like running,'' Rangel said. "It's run, run, run, as fast as you can. You reach a goal and always know there's another step to take, so you keep running for that goal, running, running, running. At first, you just try to keep up, but then you start going faster and faster, and then you find something else to conquer. But you are always running and chasing something and that's a lot of what life is all about.''
While Rangel mulls over her college choices and strives to be the valedictorian of her senior class, she remains committed to the sport that was such an unknown little more than a year ago. She ran states alone last year, so she hopes the entire team can qualify this season. As far as her personal goals, she just wants to keep adding up the miles, going farther and farther every day.
"All I can do and want to do is my best every day,'' Rangel said. "Everybody always tells me to go for more and more, and I want to see how far I can go.''