State medalist Stella Davis, a dual cross-country and track commit, is more than excited to be competing at the Division I level at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

“I can’t imagine going to a school and not running,” said Davis.

Stella has competed on the cross-country team since her freshman year, but did not start track until her sophomore year. One of Stella’s biggest inspirations at Evanston was her track coach her first year on the track team, coach Sibert. He helped push her to state qualifying times during her first year on the team.

“He had so much experience and every race he just knew the right things to say to me; I learned a lot from him,” said Davis.

After her sophomore year she began reaching out to different schools about their cross-country and track programs. After talking to a variety of schools and exploring campuses, Davis knew that Illinois was the school for her.

“The girls [on the Illinois cross-country team] were just really inclusive and I just clicked with the team right away,” explained Davis “The coach is similar to my coach now—I felt like I could talk to him very easily, and I felt like we had a connection from the start.”

Not only did the athletic component of the school draw her in, but the strong engineering program was a big draw for Davis.

Looking ahead, Stella is ready to embrace the challenges of running with girls who will push her. Davis does many of her workouts alone and is able to push herself doing them, but at Illinois she will face the challenge of running with some of the elite college runners in the country.

“Having girls leagues ahead of me will be really empowering.”