Bellarmine Prep’s Borsheim has state’s fastest 5K time. She’s going for second state title this fall
Imagine being on the telephone and after hanging up, the call timer says 16 minutes and 46.6 seconds have gone by. Seems like a long phone call, right?
Now imagine running 5,000 meters in that time. You might have a better sense of just how fast Bellarmine Preparatory School senior Ella Borsheim is on the cross-country track.
She’s won both races the Lions have participated in this year, but Borsheim also has a decorated career dating back to her freshman year when she won the Class 4A Washington Interscholastic Athletics Association state meet.
And that time of 16:46.6? Currently, it’s the fastest 5K time any high school female athlete has logged in the state this year. She set the personal-record time on Sept. 17 at Magnuson Park in Seattle, coming in a full-minute faster than the second place runner, Bishop Blanchet’s Lily LaPorte (17:51.10).
“It’s really exciting for me. I think that I had a really good summer of training,” she said. “It’s really exciting for me to see some of that work starts to pay off and I think it was a real confidence boost and it makes me excited for the rest of the season… I really enjoy running, it’s my passion. It’s really easy to get out there and put in the work every day.”
Borsheim has been running ever since she was 10 years old and fell in love with the sport after her father introduced her to it. Like most kids, she had her hands in a lot of other sports, like gymnastics and soccer.
Once Borsheim got to high school though, she had to choose between playing soccer and running cross country. It’s safe to say that she made the right decision.
As a freshman, she won every race she ran, including a 17:36.1 winning time at the 4A state meet in Pasco. She didn’t just win — she dominated, as the only runner to finish under 18 minutes. Issaquah’s sophomore Julia David-Smith came in second with a time of 18:01.7.
“[Ella] knows when she steps to the line, she’s prepared. She is more of a math/science person and so, there are certain things we do in the workout that she knows she can quantify,” said coach Matt Ellis. “She says ‘If I can do this in our workout, then I can do this in a race’. She just comes to the race with that mindset where not only she thinks she can accomplish something, she will go out and do it.”
Her success continued into her sophomore year where she finished in either first or second in every race that she ran until state.
Borsheim had the mindset of entering that race to defend her championship from the year before. And for most of the race, she was competing for first place against David-Smith.
In the end, Borsheim is human. She hit a wall and finished the race with an 18:46.4 time that was good enough for 16th in state. To some, it may look like Borsheim just fell off from where she was the previous year, but Ellis knows his runner a bit better than that.
“She was the defending state champ going into that race, and she was going against a competitor she knows well and respects. David-Smith was running lights out, she was on fire,” he said. “I’m really proud of her on that day. She knew probably deep down she wasn’t quite in the form she was the year before but she [knew] she was the defending state champ and that meant something…. I think showed a lot of character.”
One of the biggest hallmarks of Borsheim’s character is her dedication to her craft. Again, she has been running ever since she was 10 and it takes a lot of work to stand where she has stood. The COVID-19 worldwide pandemic didn’t stop her from competing and practicing.
Her junior year was filled with out-of-state and virtual competitions. She even competed in the Nike Virtual Cross Championships where she placed second out of 154 racers with a time of 16:55.8.
It’s that work ethic that separates Borsheim from other racers. She continues to push herself nonstop. That slow progression has shown in her time at Bellarmine; she has gotten faster every year. Now, as the only senior on the team this year, she can pass her knowledge to her teammates, including her younger sister Ava, a sophomore.
“We have a lot of sophomores, so it is a pretty young crew. But we do have some people showing a lot of potential,” she said. “It’s really exciting to see and it’s been fun for me to help guide some of the younger people, give them some advice, and just encourage them to stay at it and get the most out of running themselves… It’s been fun to be on the same team as [Ava]. We didn’t have an official season last year, so this is our first season on the same team.”
Her time at Bellarmine has not ended, but she looks back at running fondly. She gets support and encouragement from her teammates, coaches, and parents. And of course, winning has been fun.
Borsheim has not narrowed down where she wants to go to school next year, but she has been recruited for the past year and a half, so her options are out there.