Sydney Petersen: Small-town girl turned D-I athlete

One hundred meters. Bellevue Avenue. Two hundred meters. Whiterock Avenue. Three hundred meters. Sopris Avenue. Four hundred meters. Elk Avenue. For four years, Sydney Petersen started her school days with a run through a Crested Butte neighborhood. Now, Petersen's drive and legs have carried her to the Colorado State Cross Country team.

Morgan Moss, Petersen's first friend after moving to Crested Butte in first grade and Petersen’s high school classmate, is impressed.

“Sydney made the transition from a 2A high school to a D-I program,” Moss said. “There aren’t a lot of people who are able to make that jump. They ran 15-20 miles a week in high school. Sydney is probably up to the 40s or 50s.”

Petersen confirmed she now runs 70 to 80 miles per week.

Photo 1. Courtesy of CSU Athletics.

Petersen's mom cultivated a love of running in her from a young age. With the legend of Emma Coburn, a track and field star who was a 2012 U.S. Olympian, hanging around town, Petersen was never in shortage of role models to look up to and goals to chase.

Cross-country has always brought community into Petersen’s life. Petersen and her best friend, Maria O'Neal, were both dedicated runners. They used to meet at their high school, Crested Butte Community School, for a morning run and make it back before anyone else had even arrived for the day.

“There was a stretch of pavement out behind the school and each block was 100 meters,” Petersen said. “It went on for four blocks, so we would measure that out as a track. That was a blessing in disguise. We didn’t have a lot of shiny things, but it was so fun.”

Petersen and O’Neal were always together in the official practices after school, too. They ran the three-mile lap around town often, but a specific memory brought them to laughter.

“We would bring a basketball (on the run) and shoot it at all the hoops around Crested Butte,” O’Neal said. “Then we would go to True Value, which was the one gas station in town and buy candy and Frappuccinos. There was this one kid on our team who tripped over the basketball and fell. The Frappuccino went everywhere!"

Photo 2. Coburn (middle-left) with Petersen (middle right). Courtesy of Maria O'Neal.

At face value, the story comes across as morbidly funny. But the kicker? The kid was Coburn’s brother. In a small town where your sister is an Olympic athlete, that’s not something easily lived down.

Petersen was a three-sport athlete in high school who focused on cross country. She was also a middle school basketball coach, treasurer for student council, a National Honor Society member and a volunteer at the Adaptive Sports Center. She filled her summers with service trips to Washington, D.C., and the Dominican Republic.

To her peers, it seemed like Petersen had it all together, but one thing she didn’t know was where she wanted to attend college, or if she wanted to run at the collegiate level at all. After running a fast time in a meet, CSU coach Art Siemers reached out, which led to two visits to Fort Collins during her senior year.

“After I met the team, I knew I had to come here,” Petersen said. “I liked the team culture. In a lot of college sports, programs are super cutthroat. My coach and team are super laid back and prioritize you as a person instead of you as an athlete. This was the only school where that was made apparent to me.”

The transition to Fort Collins was hard. Petersen wasn’t used to training year-round. She walked on and redshirted her freshman year after injuring her knee five weeks into being at school. The injury made her feel disconnected from the team, and she started to feel like she didn’t belong.

“I felt so lost,” Petersen said. “I got dropped from every single run. I remember my first semester of freshman year I cried every day from being so homesick. I felt like a failure because my college experience wasn’t living up to the idealistic version I had in my head.”

As it had done for Petersen in high school, cross-country eventually brought her a community in college.

Photo 3. Courtesy of Sydney Petersen.

“Our whole freshman class lived together in the dorms in the same half of the hallway, so that gave me a group of people to fall back on,” Petersen said. “I realized that it was OK that things weren’t how I thought they would be, and life transitions are hard. I hadn’t experienced transition up to that point in my life. I gave myself some grace, and that’s when it started to get better.”

Now she lives with three of her teammates, who double as close friends, in a house right across College Avenue from the CSU track and field facility.

“It’s just nice to live with people who are on the same schedule as me,” said Lily Tomasula-Martin, Petersen’s teammate. “Whether it’s getting up early to run or going to tutoring to keep up with my classes, staying motivated is a lot easier.”

A normal day for Petersen starts with a 6 a.m. run. After her run, she attends classes and heads to the training room to get work done for any injury she may have. Team practices are every afternoon. Following team practice, Petersen goes to weight training. After that she cooks dinner, watches a movie and does any homework that needs to be completed.

Then there are the adjustments that had to be made due to COVID-19.

“The part that’s changed the most is not being able to compete,” she said.

With hopes of a condensed cross-country season this winter, Petersen and her team are staying prepared.

“I’ve gotten really good at training with nothing on the horizon,” Petersen said.

Before college, Petersen hadn’t been through a big transition in life. Maybe it was difficult coming from a high school with 11 people on the team to a D-I training program, but now she’s navigating a season in the midst of a pandemic.

Elk Avenue is far from the only finish line Petersen will cross.