Tongue River HS State Champion Runner Commits To Black Hills State University

A State Champion runner from Sheridan County, who just started a new running event, will continue to run in college.

Senior Maddy Hill of Tongue River who is this year’s Wyoming 2A Girls Cross Country State Champ, has signed her letter of intent to run cross country and track at Black Hills State in Spearfish, South Dakota.

This past fall was her first year running cross country, and she won the state meet with a time of 20 minutes 19.39 seconds, beating the next closest runner by about 9 seconds.

That helped the Lady Eagles team to a state runner-up finish.

At the state outdoor track and field meet back in May, she was 4th in the 400 meter dash, 4th in the triple jump and was part of the state champion 4 by 400 meter relay team, all of which helped TR win the 2A Girls State Championship.

She’s participated in indoor track and field since her freshman year, and her junior year was her first year of outdoor track.

Hill says her coach encouraged her to run cross country as a way to better her track and field times.

She adds cross country has a different team feel to it.

“The team was very inclusive, because everyone’s running the same distance and so we’re all doing it together, we’re all in the same pain, for the same amount of time, we can relate a lot to each other, and so I liked how close our team was compared to outdoor track, and we had a great outdoor track team, but in cross country I think your team becomes more close knit, than in other sports and so I really enjoyed that aspect of it.”

Hill says she chose Black Hills State because of their education program and wants to be a high school history teacher plus a running coach after college.

In her freshman year of high school she played soccer at Sheridan, and in her junior year she was the manager of the Tongue River football team.