Miles ready to return to the track for St. James

St. James’ Presley Miles swept all of her indoor and our door cross-country events last year but the coronavirus removed that chance in 2019-20. (Contributed)

By TIM GAYLE

When Presley Miles learned that high school sports in Alabama would be suspended by the Coronavirus pandemic, the St. James junior was understandably upset.

After sweeping all of her indoor, outdoor and cross-country events in the 2018-19 school year, Miles wanted the opportunity to do it again in 2019-20. And again in 2020-21. 

“Cancellation of the outdoor meet was definitely one of the hardest things to hear,” she said. “I definitely wanted to repeat the ‘quad’ – doing the 400, 800, 1600 and 3200. I felt like I had a good shot because I had been training super hard for it. I wanted to repeat my nine state championships from last year. It definitely would have been cool to add that to my resume, but this gives me more time to train for cross country and hopefully get sub-17:00 in cross country.”

But there was an even bigger danger to Miles and any other 2021 graduate. Their junior season is regarded as pivotal as far as recruiting. Juniors use that time to narrow their collegiate choices and to take college prep tests to obtain academic eligibility. When the pandemic shut down the world in mid-March, it shut down the academic world as well. 

“It affects on-campus visits at the colleges I haven’t toured yet,” Miles said. “We were going to go across the U.S., touring a bunch of colleges, but we can’t now so that’s tough. But a lot of colleges are doing virtual tours, so that’s a positive. 

“It’s definitely affecting the ACT and SAT (testing) that I have to take to get into certain colleges. I’m definitely a brute-force type of gal, do it as many times as possible, and I don’t have the option to do it as many times so that’s hard.”

Her sister Sailor, as an example, lifted her ACT score each time she took the test, finishing with a 32 on her ninth test. Presley won’t have nine tries. The April and June ACT testing dates were canceled by coronavirus, leaving Miles just three dates – July 18, Sept. 12 and Oct. 24 – before the Nov. 9 early signing date. A national recruit such as Presley Miles might find herself on a shorter list because she may not have the qualifying scores for Ivy League schools, for example.

“For the normal person, it would definitely hinder their recruiting because this is prime time,” said her father, Greg Miles. “I got Presley started in front of coaches really early so most of them have already made a decision on Presley regarding times and what she can perform.

“But here’s where the problem really arises as far as hurting athletes. They’re canceling ACT tests. She talks to (college coaches) on the phone every night, anyway. It delays unofficial visits, but doesn’t really delay official visits because they don’t like to do official visits until (Aug. 1). The beauty of that is then you get to meet the girls that will be your new teammates the next year so you get to see what recruiting class they got.”

In the meantime, she continues to train from a regimen designed by her former coach, Kevin Madden, who is now stationed by the military in South Korea.

“It’s definitely frustrating that I’m training and won’t get to race any time soon, but I think that’s the core of our sport, just training within yourself and enjoying it,” she said. “I enjoy training and running with some of my teammates – six feet apart, of course. It doesn’t affect my training that much because I’m being trained remotely from South Korea by my coach, so I can kind of pick and choose where I want to run.”

She had planned to run in the New Balance Nationals set for June 18-21 in North Carolina, but that event has now been changed to July 16-19.   

“It slowed down our meets,” Greg Miles said. “The indoor nationals were canceled, the outdoor nationals are probably going to be canceled. There are some things that we have to put on the burner and say I don’t know if that’s going to be run or canceled or what, but we had already decided, before they canceled the (AHSAA) season, we switched her to her final year of training, which is starting for cross country.”

She was planning to run as a South all-star in Alabama All-Stars Sports Week in mid-July in Montgomery, but that event has been canceled as well. Still, the next set of races likely will be cross country, where she won the Alabama High School Athletic Association 3A championships in 2018 and 2019.

Losing four state championship races in May was tough, but Miles hopes she can build on her legacy with nine championship events in 2020-21 – a cross-country championship, followed by four events in the state indoor meet and four more in the outdoor meet. She currently has 16 championships under her belt – five outdoor, nine indoor and two cross country – and would like to run a sub 17-minute time in the cross-country championships.

The record is 17:03.04, established when Catholic’s Amaris Tyynismaa won the first of her five cross country championships as an eighth grader. She can’t catch Tyynismaa’s overall record of 31 track championships, but she can establish her own legacy as one of the all-time greats by setting new record times in the events. 

Provided, of course, the events are held in the 2020-21 track season.