Soldotna’s Allie Ostrander was named the Mountain West Women’s Outdoor Track and Field Student-Athlete of the Year on Thursday by the league’s coaches.
The Kenai Central graduate adds that honor to the Indoor Track and Field Student-Athlete of the Year honor she won in 2016.
The Boise State redshirt freshman had an outdoor track season that marked a comeback from injury issues over the past year. Ostrander missed her 2016 outdoor track season with a tibial stress fracture.
Following her performance at the NCAA Division I Outdoor Track and Field Championships on Saturday, Ostrander said she sustained a sacral stress fracture in September 2016. Ostrander and her coaches were ca utious with the injury and she didn’t get back into walking and running until December, then waited until early March to start training again.
That meant Ostrander missed the cross-country and indoor track seasons with the injury.
Despite that, Saturday she won the 3,000-meter steeplechase NCAA title, becoming the first freshman to win that event since 2006. She then had just 75 minutes to rest before finishing fourth in the 5,000 meters. She earned All-America honors in both events.
“It was awesome today to just give stress fractures the middle finger,” Ostrander said after tying Emma Bates for scoring the most points at the NCAA meet in Broncos history.
In addition to the 5,000 and steeplechase, Ostrander also ran the 10,000 and 1,500 this season. She won the conference title in the 10,000 and qualified for the NCAA West Preliminary Championships in the 1,500, but chose to focus on the 5,000 and steeplechase.
Ostrander, a kinesiology major, was just as good in the classroom, where she has a 4.0 grade-point average.
