After overcoming a health scare, East’s Rosie Conway is off to a hot start to the cross-country season

After proving to be one of the fastest freshman cross-country runners in the state in her first year of high school, Bettye Davis East Anchorage’s Rosie Conway was widely expected to at least win regions and potentially more as a sophomore last year.

After a strong start in which she placed in the top 10 and set a new personal record time at the annual Ted McKenney Invitational in Soldotna, Conway struggled. She was eventually diagnosed with asthma and missed most of the season to prioritize her health.

“Steadily throughout the season, she was declining and not feeling very good, so she took the year off to refocus on her health,” East co-head coach Christiana Shurtleff said. “I think this summer she actually felt better because she took that time to herself to make sure she was truly healthy.”

Now a junior, Conway has not only seemingly picked up where she left off when last healthy but has greatly improved and is poised to be one the top contenders in both her region and the entire state.

She set a new personal best with a first-place finish in the ASD North quad meet to open the season. It featured a talent pool consisting of endurance runners from perennial powerhouse Chugiak, including reigning Gatorade Player Hannah Shaha.

“I kind of came into this (season) in the dark not knowing where I’d be physically,” Conway said. “The first quad went really well and I was super happy. I (bested personal record) by a minute in a 3K, which was a really great start and boosted my confidence a lot.”

This past weekend, she set another personal best by coming in second place at this year’s McKenney Invite with a time of 19:29 and was right on the heels of Colony’s Ella Hopkins, who came in first at 19:15.

“Going into Soldotna, I again was kind of in the dark about where I was going to because I hadn’t raced a 5K in over a year,” Conway said. “I also PR’d in that, which was also unexpected. It’s just super nice to be racing back with the same group of girls that I haven’t raced with in a while.”

The health issue she dealt with last year was so severe that it caused her to miss six weeks of school between August 2023 and March of this year because she was so susceptible to other illnesses.

“I just couldn’t get air in so it was depressing my immune system,” Conway said. “I just caught every cold, I got COVID twice and other colds in between.”

She still managed to muster up the strength to compete in regions last year even though she knew the odds of her qualifying for state herself were very slim.

“I was hoping I could help our team make state,” Conway said.

East co-head coach Scott Henry was proud of the “great attitude” she had throughout that process and believes that it has “played a really important role in the outcomes she has had so far.”

“I think her progress has been amazing,” he said. “It’s a result of the amount of work that she has put in throughout the offseason and winter both for the fitness part and also making sure the things she was struggling with last year are a lot better.”

Preparing for the comeback

Training during the summer is integral to a cross-country runner’s success in the fall because the season is so short.

“The fact that she can just focus and go out and do it on her own, she does a lot of training on her own and when she comes with the team,” Shurtleff said. “She is quiet and reserved and sets a good example for the whole team.”

Heading into this past summer, she was just focused on mountain running and competed in Mount Marathon, a race she finished first in the junior girls division two years ago before starting her freshman year of high school.

“This year it didn’t go at all how I wanted,” Conway said. “The nerves got to me and my stomach. I could not keep food down the day of the race.”

After Mount Marathon, she transitioned the training for the cross country season by ramping up the mileage of her sessions without increasing the intensity.

“I didn’t want to injure myself by ramping it up too quickly,” Conway said.

Running roots and goals for the season

Endurance running is in Conway’s blood as both her parents are avid runners with her father being a former college athlete and her mom competing in long-distance races. They both are 20-year Mount Marathon veterans.

She first started running competitively for her elementary school’s running club in the first grade and her career nearly ended before it got started.

“I tripped and fell and tore my knee up and refused to run again for the next three years because I was scared,” Conway said with a laugh. “In fourth or fifth grade, I started again, and it is really shallow to say, but when I started winning, I really got hooked.”

From there, she started training with her dad more seriously. She said that success based more on hard work than natural talent makes reaching new milestones that much sweeter.

“My freshman year, I did pretty good but that wasn’t really based on off of training so this year coming back after a rough season last year, it is solely based on my training and so much more rewarding than it has been in the past,” Conway said.

While she doesn’t have a favorite between mountain and cross-country running, she prefers them both over running track.

“I like hills and being out training and not being on flat pavement,” Conway said. “I really enjoy mountain running but I like the speed that you get from cross country switching from flat (surfaces) to downhill.”

As a freshman, she finished third at regions and eighth at state, and she’d like to at least top those milestones and potentially become region champion.

“Being region champ would be super cool, but I know that there are a few people who haven’t raced this year in our region because they haven’t had enough practices so there’s some wildcards out there still,” Conway said.

While she is leaving it up to Conway to set goals for the season because she doesn’t want to put any added pressure on her, Shurtleff just wants her to be “healthy and happy” and believes “the sky’s the limit for her.”

“I think she is set up for a really good season,” Henry said. “I feel like she has a really good mindset about whatever happens and focusing on what her effort is and making sure it’s the best she can do for her and whatever the results are, they are.”

Having bested some of the top competition in the state at the onset of this season has sent Conway’s confidence soaring and made her consider reevaluating some of the goals she set heading into the year.

“My only goal this season was to start and finish,” she said. “I just wanted to be able to race again.”