Girdwood, Alaska, population estimated at 2,500, sits in a valley at the base of Mount Alyeska, a ski resort in the winter and a hiking destination in the summer. The mountain town has one main road, a two-lane highway surrounded by hemlock and conifer.
There is one elementary school, but the nearest high school is 30 miles away in Anchorage. There is a fire department, but no police station. Further away from the resort, the paved roads turn to gravel.
It was on the gravel paths and dirt trails of the Alaskan woodlands where Northwestern cross country runner Ava Earl, now a senior, fell in love with running.
But it was nearly 3,000 miles away from home, on a terrain that couldn’t be more different than the undulating hills of her hometown, where Earl earned national acclaim.
Last season, Earl finished 64th in the NCAA Championships, the second-best individual placement in Wildcats cross country history.
This year, both Earl and the team have greater aspirations.
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A rule in the Earl household growing up was that every child had to play an instrument and participate in a sport. Earl picked the guitar by herself, but the sport was selected for her.
When Earl was seven, her mother signed her up for a running program through her community’s school. She took an immediate liking to running and began winning races shortly thereafter.
“I started to get good at it, and that was just so fun,” Earl said. “Like, I didn’t expect to be winning these races when I was eight.”
But it was the outdoors that Earl fell in love with, running around her self-described “hippie town” as she continued racing through middle school and into high school.
You can hear Earl’s love of the wilderness through her music, soft guitar chords strumming a soundtrack for nature.
Getting to Earl’s high school, South Anchorage High School, meant taking a half-hour bus ride down state Route 1 with a stunning view of the Chugach Mountains across the Turnagain Arm.
At South Anchorage High School, Earl met Sara Miller, the school’s cross country coach. From the moment Earl came in as a freshman, Miller said she made an impact.
“You got that sense that she was adaptable, she was hungry, she wanted to learn,” Miller said.
Through four years of high school, Earl developed a bond with her teammates, emerging as a leader within the program. She burst onto the scene as a freshman with a successful campaign but, Miller said, felt pressured to deliver a strong performance against a rival school.
Miller said Earl struggled with the stress of high expectations but ultimately rose to the occasion and found her stride during the meet.
“Watching her go through that progression of somebody that had success, dealt with the pressure and the mental demons and things like that, and came out the other side, it was awesome to see,” Miller said.
Earl’s magnetic presence drew new runners onto the team, strengthening the value of the Wolverines’ team culture.
Miller said during pre-race runs, Earl began a ritual called the “rock ceremony,” a sort of meditation period ahead of a meet. That ritual still occurs before Wolverine meets today, four years after Earl graduated from South Anchorage.
Another habit Earl began while running for the Wolverines: writing messages of positive reinforcement on her hands before a race.
“It can be really calming, to center myself in four things that I want to be able to do well,” Earl said. “Even if it’s as simple as ‘breathe,’ or something that I think is a lot more scary, like ‘fight.’ … it makes me feel slightly more prepared.”
Earl writes four messages, two on the outside of her hands and two on her palms, to keep herself locked in on the race she’s running. She doesn’t know who suggested the idea, her or Miller, but still carries the habit in her races today.
Miller is a guidance counselor at South Anchorage. She said during the lunch period, her office would turn into an impromptu concert venue.
“Twenty runners would pack in at lunch, and Ava would pick up a guitar and just make up songs in the office,” Miller said.
Earl, a prolific musician through high school and beyond, performed as an opening act for now-pop icon Maggie Rogers when she was 15 years old. Her debut self-titled album was released on Spotify in 2017. She has since released three others: “Am I Me Yet?,” “The Roses” and “Too Much.”
After the cross country season concludes, Earl has a gig on Nov. 29 at Uncommon Ground in Wrigleyville.
Miller described Earl as a “unicorn.”
“Ava was an amazing student,” Miller said. “And not only was she an amazing student, she would tutor all of her friends, and she’d give time to give back. And then she was a phenomenal athlete, and then she was a phenomenal musician and creative mind. And not only that, she still had time to bake her friends treats and be there for them.”
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After a few conversations with NU cross country coach Jill Miller when she was recruited, Earl committed to run for the ’Cats, citing the athletic and academic potential of the school. She said she had a strong first impression of the program’s coaching staff.
Her first impression rang true, and when she arrived on campus, she quickly formed bonds with her coaches, specifically assistant coach Connor Boushon, who coached NU from 2019 to 2023. There is a life-sized cardboard cutout of Boushon standing in the NU cross country locker room.
“We didn’t know just how vivacious Ava is until she stepped on campus,” Jill Miller said. “We quickly found out that she just had a personality that could really light up the room and get people very enthused about what we’re doing.”
NU cross country athletes run competitively in all three quarters of the school year. In the fall, the squad runs cross country. The winter and spring seasons are spent competing in indoor and outdoor track respectively.
In the spring of her freshman year, Earl won the 5000-meter race at the Drake Relays, logging her first career victory. Through the first season, Jill Miller saw potential and raw talent that could be molded into stardom.
“She had to learn over that first year and a half to really believe in herself and her abilities, that if she laid down the work and poured herself into the recovery, prioritizing the heavy hitters that we talk about –– sleep, nutrition and stress management –– that she could be really, really great,” Jill Miller said.
As the years have gone by, Earl has become one of the program’s top runners. Jill Miller called her a “true-born leader.”
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Earl has made two NCAA Championships throughout her career. Her first, the one in her sophomore year, was a top-200 finish in the 6K, as the team punched its first ticket to the NCAA Championships in 20 years. It was also her least favorite.
“We were so excited to make it to the championships that when we got there, we were like, ‘Oh, shoot, we still have to run this,’” Earl said. “And I think that we had collectively used up our energy just getting there.”
The squad finished second to last in the team competition. But it was a step in the right direction, and the ’Cats punched their ticket to the NCAA Championships via Earl’s individual performance in 2023. Earl finished in eighth place at the NCAA Midwest Regionals, enabling her to compete in Charlottesville at collegiate cross country’s highest stage.
This, too, was bittersweet, she said, as her finish in the NCAA Midwest Regionals knocked out her teammate Kalea Bartolotto from individual qualification in Bartolotto’s final year of eligibility.
But Earl beat out every runner on Iowa State’s squad –– the team that earned the Midwest region’s qualifier that year.
“I look back on it really fondly, because I am really proud of myself and how I raced there,” Earl said. “I think it was one of my best races. I had a lot of mixed feelings about it, but, yeah, looking back on it now it’s like, I feel happy.”
This year, the team has soared to new heights. NU topped the USTFCCCA Midwest Region rankings for the first time in program history last month and climbed as high as No. 24 in the national rankings, its highest ever. Jill Miller’s philosophy of setting the bar high has rang true within the program so far this season, with several runners stepping up and delivering throughout meets this season. The team defeated then-No. 19 Wisconsin when it won the Big Ten Preview earlier this year.
“We feel that we want, year after year, to be at the National Championship,” Jill Miller said. “And going into the season, Ava’s goal was to be an All-American –– that’s top 40 at the national championship, and that’s a big goal. She knows what she needs to do over the next six weeks to get herself there. … I know that she can get herself there by championship season.”
Earl has at least four seasons remaining as a member of NU cross country –– this year’s cross country, indoor track and outdoor track seasons as well as next year’s cross country season. Jill Miller said the squad is looking into seeing if Earl has eligibility for next year’s indoor and outdoor seasons.
Earl currently holds program records in the 800-meter indoor race, 1500-meter outdoor race and 5000-meter outdoor race.
Jill Miller says the growth Earl has displayed since she stepped foot on campus for the first time has been tremendous.
“Ava has shown that you don’t need to come in and be perfect, and you don’t need to come in and know everything and have a boatload of high school performances to say that you can go be great,” Jill Miller said. “She’s shown that if you’re open to learning, if you’re open to being really honest with yourself and your coaching staff, you can grow tremendously within our sport.”
Meanwhile, as the squad mounts its push for another NCAA championship berth, Earl has set lofty goals for herself.
“I would love to be one of the greatest people of my time here,” Earl said. “I want people to beat my records because that means that our program is growing. That means that we set a good foundation. But while I’m here, I want to be one of the best.”
Correction: A previous version of one of this story’s photo captions misstated the date of the Loyola Lakefront Invitational. The story also incorrectly stated a cardboard cutout of Earl’s assistant coach was in her bedroom. It was in the cross country locker room. The Daily regrets these errors.
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— Cross Country: Northwestern takes down No. 19 Wisconsin, wins Big Ten Preview
