One of the greatest and most accomplished girls distance runners in Inland Empire history will have a chance at one more CIF state title Saturday night.
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Corona Santiago’s Rylee Blade wins the Brenda Martinez Girls Sweepstakes during the Inland Empire Challenge cross country meet with a time of 15:49.5 at Cucamonga-Guasti Regional Park in Ontario on Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024. (Photo by Milka Soko, Contributing Photographer)
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Corona Santiago’s Rylee Blade wins the Brenda Martinez Girls Sweepstakes during the Inland Empire Challenge cross country meet with a time of 15:49.5 at Cucamonga-Guasti Regional Park in Ontario on Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024. (Photo by Milka Soko, Contributing Photographer)
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“Honestly it hasn’t really hit me yet,” Santiago senior Rylee Blade said.
Blade will be competing in the 3200-meter final at 9:20 p.m. at Buchanan High in Clovis for the third straight year and between track and cross country is going for her fourth individual state title.
Blade won her first state title in the 3200 as a sophomore with a time of 10:02.19, beating Oaks Christian junior Peyton Godsey by less than a second. It was a bit of a surprise since three of her finals competitors had run sub-10:00 earlier in the season.
“Winning my sophomore year was an eye-opener,” she said. “I just wanted to get on the podium, but I got a huge PR (by more than 18 seconds).”
Blade, who had finished third in state in Division I cross country as a sophomore, followed that up with cross country individual wins the last two years. All three years she was named IE Varsity Girls Cross Country Runner of the Year.
Related: Hot temperatures await strong IE contingent headed to CIF State Championships
But she wasn’t able to repeat as 3200 champion, finishing third as a junior.
“I had to learn what my body needed because I dealt with so much (junior year),” Blade said.
This track season started off well for Blade. At the Nike Indoor Nationals (March 13-14) she was part of two California records: in the 5,000 meters (15:16.72), and in the distance medley relay when she ran the 1200 meter leg of Santiago’s 11:37.35 time that set a state indoor record.
That prompted coach RIck Etheridge to have Blade go after the 3200 national record at The TEN, an outdoor meet on March 29.
Blade ended up winning the race easily with a PR of 10:00.56, but was far short of the national record, which is either 9:43.74 (a true 3200) or 9:38.41 (a 3200 split in a two mile).
She did not run another competitive 3200 until the Big VIII League Finals a month later.
Entering CIF meets, Blade wanted to set a PR at some point before state and that came in the first meet, the CIF Southern Section Division 1 Prelims on May 10. Her time of 9:58.46 even set a CIF-SS Division 1 record in the process.
“The record wasn’t on my mind at all,” Blade said. “It was more that, within one of the rounds before state, I wanted to break 10 (minutes). I wasn’t planning on it being prelims. It ended up being that day.”
Blade’s season took a turn for the worse the next week when she was running the 1600 meters at CIF-SS Finals.
“During the mile, at the start, I stepped wrong and I tweaked my Achilles’,” Blade said.
She finished fourth in the 1600, then was far from 100 percent in running the 3200 later in the meet. She finished second at CIF-SS Finals in the 3200, running nearly 28 seconds slower than she had the week before. It was the first time in three years she didn’t win the CIF-SS Division 1 3200 meter title.
“State is the big goal. You still want the titles, so it was very heartbreaking,” Blade said. “I didn’t want to overpush, but I wanted to be able to get back to Masters. It definitely was heartbreaking, but I got my Masters title back.”
Because the 3200 was her primary event all along, she dropped the 1600 at Masters and won the Masters 3200 for the third straight year with a time of 10:11.38.
“I want to go into college (Florida State) healthy. Knowing my body, I don’t want to overdo it,” she said.
This week, she might have to push herself close to overdoing it in order to win another state title.
While she had the top qualifying time in the state, her best time this season is, by fractions of a second, the third best time behind La Jolla’s Chiara Dailey (9:58.02) and Montgomery’s Hanne Thomsen (9:58.17).
Blade said one of the important things for her entering the state meet is to stay off the internet in regards to the meet. She doesn’t want to read whether she’s expected or not expected to win.
“It’s a race and it could go any way,” she said. “A few days leading up to it, I try to stay away (from the internet). Last year, I’d look at that stuff. But I feel like it adds unnecessary pressure you don’t need.”
