Post Falls High senior Sammie Wood wins elite girls high school mile at The Podium

SPOKANE — Some three weeks ago, when Post Falls High senior Sammie Wood received an invitation to compete in an elite high school girls mile run at The Podium, she was sick and hadn’t been training for a week.

Friday night, Wood was feeling just fine, beating a field of five other runners — including the winner of Idaho’s 5A girls cross country meet last fall — at the Lilac Grand Prix at the new indoor facility in downtown Spokane.

Wood, who has signed to run cross country at Boise State, won in 5 minutes, 6.70 seconds. Caroline Moon was second in 5:09.14 and Allie Bruce, a Boise High sophomore and last fall’s state 5A cross country champ, was third in 5:09.65.

“I felt so happy,” Wood said. “So grateful that they put on this meet, and to promote high school distance running is cool.”

Wood said the pace of the race started out quite slow — reminding her of a 3,000-meter race she’d run at The Podium a couple weeks ago. So she was preparing for when she was going to make her final kick on the 200-meter track.

“We were three wide (Bruce, Wood and Ana Peters) until the beginning of that last lap,” said Wood, who was fifth in that state 5A girls cross country race last fall. “On that last curve I thought, ‘I have a lot left in my legs.’ It turned out I had quite a lot left.”