Katelyn Tuohy to make her collegiate debut this weekend

More than a year after announcing that she had committed to attending North Carolina State University in the fall of 2020, American high-school superstar Katelyn Tuohy is finally making her collegiate debut at the Camel City Invitational in Winston-Salem, NC on Saturday, Feb. 20. This will be Tuohy’s first race since she won the 1,500m at the New York high school state meet on March 7, 2020.

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With everything that has happened, it’s easy to forget that this is one of the United States’ most decorated high school runners’ freshman year. According to an interview with Let’sRun.com, Tuohy’s coach, Laurie Henes, made the decision to have the young runner sit out the cross-country season last fall because she was not fully healthy when she arrived on campus. Instead, they decided to take it slow, pointing out that it didn’t make sense to rush her back into a fall season that didn’t have an NCAA championship.

Evidently, Tuohy is now healthy enough to race, and she will be competing for NC for the first time this weekend in the 3,000m. She is the current high school record-holder at the distance, running a 9:01.81 in January 2019 to break Mary Cain’s previous record of 9:04.51. With only three weeks until the NCAA XC Championships, this race will be a good test of her fitness, and track fans everywhere will be watching to see what she’ll do this Saturday.

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Canada’s Ben Flanagan will also be competing on the weekend in the men’s 3,000m. The 26-year-old is coming off a win at the Virginia Beach Invitational on February 1st, where he ran the 3,000m in 7:51.32.

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The elite races will begin on Saturday at 3:00 pm EST, but you need a RunnerSpace +PLUS membership to watch the live event. If you are unable to watch the event, live results will be posted here.

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