Running

Perfect grades earn Alaska’s Ostrander another award

Alaska runner Allie Ostrander added another award to her growing resume  Friday.

Thanks to perfect grades and a national track championship, Ostrander was named the co-winner of the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association's scholar-athlete of the year award for women's outdoor track.

Ostrander, who won the steeplechase for Boise State at this year's NCAA Division I national championships, shared the academic honor with Charlotte Taylor of the University of San Francisco.

Both women own cumulative grade-point averages of 4.0. Taylor won the 10,000 meters at the national championships.

Ostrander, a Kenai Central graduate who is from Soldotna, is majoring in kinesiology. Academically she will be a junior in the fall, but she has three years of eligibility left in all three of her sports — outdoor track, indoor track and cross country.

As a freshman, she was the national runner-up in cross country, but missed last season with an injury. Earlier this month, she won Seward's Mount Marathon with the second-fastest women's time in race history.

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