STANFORD RECRUIT Liam Anderson follows in the footsteps of Card greats Chris Derrick and
Grant Fisher by being named Gatorade National Boys Cross Country Runner of the Year on Wednesday.
Anderson won the Nike Cross Nationals in course-record time, running 14:57.6 over 5K to win by more than three seconds in Portland, Oregon. He also captured his second California Division III title.
Anderson is from Corte Madera and attends Redwood High in Larkspur. He follows Derrick (2008) and current senior Fisher (2014 and 2015) as Stanford-bound winners.
"It really says a lot about the type of guy Stanford recruits and the type of guy who succeeds at Stanford," Anderson said to Erik Boal of DyeStat.com.
Those who earned Gatorade state Runner of the Year honors earned consideration for the national award. Among them are two other members of his Stanford recruiting class: Florida's Charles Hicks and Massachusetts' Ryan Oosting. Anderson was the first California Gatorade Boys Cross Country Runner of the Year from Northern California since German Fernandez in 2007.
"It really is an honor to be among the group of guys associated with this award," Anderson told DyeStat. "It goes to show how competitive it is and how hard it is to get this award as a cross country runner, the fact that these guys are all doing so many things, not just running really fast and working really hard in the classroom, but also contributing outside of that. It goes to show that there is something really special about cross country."
Anderson was a three-time NXN qualifier and a third-place finisher in 2017. He is the reigning California 1,600 track champion and owns three North Coast Section Meet of Champions track titles: two in the 1,600 and one in the 3,200. His 3,200 best of 8:52.74 came at the Arcadia Invitational. He ran 4:09.31 in his state-winning 1,600 last spring.
Anderson is part of a Stanford recruiting class that numbers 19 and could grow. Besides Hicks and Oosting, men's distance recruits include Canada's NACAC Under-20 cross country champion Devon Burke, Penn Relays 3,000 winner Devin Hart, and Millrose Games high school mile winner Matt Rizzo.
