BOISE – The day Samantha Wood was born, her mother Angie Wood placed her in a baby jogger.
“Her whole life she’s been in the running world,” she said.
And it just took her to the other side of the world.
The soon-to-be Boise State sophomore runner was the top American female placer at the Mountain Classic Junior Race at the U20 World Mountain and Trail Running Championship on June 10 in Innsbruck, Austria. She completed the near 4.2 mile trek over the Austrian Alps in 36 minutes, 16 seconds to finish 16th.
“It was just such an honor. I think that was a compilation of everything coming together at the right moment,” Wood said. “I think if seventh grade me saw me competing in a Team USA uniform, I would flip out and wonder if that’s even me?”
(Photo Courtesy 2023 World Mountain and Trail Running Championships)
She wasn’t the only one.
Upon moving from Corona, California to Post Falls, Idaho in the seventh grade, Wood needed a way to make some new friends. Angie and her father Richard Wood both suggested running. Wood had been a part of the 100-Mile Club at Luiseno Elementary School where the goal was to run 100 miles by the end of the school year.
But that was years ago.
It showed when Richard followed her out on his bicycle during a practice run from the house. Wood got about two miles out before suddenly stopping in her tracks. Keeled over and out of breath, she only managed to get a few words out, “I can’t go any further.”
“I was thinking, ‘Oh boy, we have to find a different sport for her because she cannot run as far as she needs to in junior high,” Richard said with a laugh. “I never told her that. But I was really thinking running wasn’t her sport.”
She did it anyway, albeit haphazardly.
Wood routinely skipped practices and when she was actually running, it was only to talk to her friends at the back of the pack.
“I was not taking it seriously,” Wood said.
However, she eventually did.
Wood turned in River City Middle School’s highest finish at their end-of-the-year district meet. She placed seventh.
“I remember it being such a big deal to have our middle school regionals,” Wood said. “So I was like, ‘Yeah, I want to do this now.”
She won it the following year as an eighth grader.
The results continued to be there going into high school, as well.
While Wood finished just one spot out of receiving a medal with a 21st-place finish at the state cross country meet her freshman year – something playfully referred to as the start of her “villain arc” – she made up for it during spring during track.Wood not only won her first-ever high school race, but broke the school’s 1,600-meter run record in the process. The mark had stood for more than 16 years.
“That kind of shocked everybody at the school,” Richard said.
The next two-and-half years, though, didn’t exactly go as planned.
The coronavirus pandemic robbed her of her sophomore track season before injury and illness arguably cost Wood state titles. She injured her iliotibial band, which is the tendon that runs along the outside of the leg, a week before state track her junior year. Wood still managed to make the podium by taking third in the 3,200 and fourth in the 1,600.
She then missed nearly a month of her senior cross country season with mono. Wood was coming off three weeks of bedrest and limited training when she took fifth at the state meet.
“Colleges were calling her from all over the country, and when she got mono and went down for three weeks, all of a sudden the calls quit coming,” Richard said.
Except one.
She signed her National Letter of Intent with the Broncos a little more than a month later.
“For us, a lot of times, it’s just finding the kid that fits and has the right mentality,” Boise State track and field head coach Corey Ihmels said. “Running can be a pretty brutal sport. I think any sport can be. You can be on top of the world one day and then the next day, you’re not. You’ve got to have a short memory and move forward. And I think when you see a kid like that who’s had some struggles, but not let that deter her, there’s value in that for us.”
And Wood did just that.
She ended her high school career by going unbeaten in the 1,600 and 3,200, which included finally capturing those ever-elusive state titles in both. Wood ran away with them too. She won the 1,600 with more than a six-second gap and the 3,200 by 12.
(Photo by Richard Wood)
“To see her achieve that, to work that hard, that’s one of the many highlights of my career,” said a tearful Brian Trefry, who recently retired after 20 seasons as the Post Falls cross country head coach. “Especially when you look at where she came from. Definitely talented. State champion? Maybe. But definitely not for certain. She’s talented, don’t get me wrong. You obviously don’t do those things if you’re not talented. But there are plenty of people who are talented who don’t put in the work and achieve the results. So it’s pretty amazing to see.”
Wood’s freshman season with the Broncos included being a member of the lineup at the Mountain West Cross Country Championships. She then ran a personal-best time of 20:47.5 a couple weeks later for a 91st-place finish at the NCAA West Region Cross Country Championships. In track, Wood notched a season-best time of 4:35.79 in the 1,500 to come in 108th at the Bryan Clay Invitational.
“For me to go from getting first all the time to celebrating getting 100th, it was definitely a big adjustment,” Wood said. “It does feel like starting over. It’s easy to think that you got worse or you peaked in high school. But you gotta look at what you’re doing. I had to focus on, ‘Oh I’m on the travel team. I’m on this A team. I just pr’d.’”
And being one of only four Americans chosen for the Mountain Classic Junior Race at the U20 World Mountain and Trail Running Championships earlier this month.
Even though Wood had completely spaced applying for it about six months earlier.
She kept receiving calls in April from an unknown number and didn’t answer.
“I thought it was just a spam call,” Wood said with a laugh.
Wood finally picked up the phone to learn of her selection. Now all that was left was getting the final go-ahead from both her parents and Ihmels, who she had also forgotten to tell.
(Photo by Richard Wood)
“Anytime you can get exposure, no matter what it is, it’s a positive step. She was excited about it,” Ihmels said. “Things like that are things that can catapult you. Even though that really technically has not a lot to do with what we do, it has everything to do with what we do. It’s one of those things where it’s just a positive experience.”
And that’s exactly what Wood had too.
Richard had actually been to Innsbruck on a ski trip during his freshman year of college.
“When I was 20 and out there, I never in a million years dreamed that I’d have a kid go back competing in a world competition,” he said.
This year’s event, which former Bronco and three-time national champion Allie Ostrander won back in 2015, consisted of 57 runners spread across 21 different countries.
As the top American qualifier, which was largely based on her performance at the USATF National Cross Country Championships (16th) in January, Wood was at the very front of the start line. She was in the lead pack for about the first six minutes during the single track trail flat. But Wood had to exert a lot of energy on a winding staircase with single stone steps so steep that participants, including herself, basically had to stop and walk just to get over them. Nearly half of the 7k race featured grueling hill climbs like that.
“My dad said part of the course looked like you needed a ladder and I’d agree with that,” Wood said. “My lungs were burning. My legs were burning. It was not good.”
It all left her a little spent going into another sharp climb. This time straight into the woods. So approximately five minutes later, Wood fell back to 14th where she basically stayed for the remainder of the race, which also included several precipitous drops.
“It was almost worse than the uphill because it was just so straight down,” Wood said. “I didn’t wear trail shoes, so it was definitely scary when you’re going downhill on dirt. I almost twisted my ankle so many times.”
Gratefully, the last mile was on level pavement. It allowed her to make up some much-needed time to record the best finish by an American female – and male. Great Britain’s Rebecca Flaherty won it in 33:20.
“I for one am not super surprised that she made it there and did that well,” Trefry said. “She just loves being out in nature, pushing herself, overcoming a challenge, competing for her country and of course, the thing she’s basically been doing all of her life – running.”
