Saint Michael's College

Acceptance Speech

After an injury ended a record-setting college running career, Mary has reached even greater heights as a two-time Olympic Marathon Trials qualifier and budding ultrarunning star. Also an Alpine skier early in her Saint Michael’s career, Mary focused on cross country for her final two seasons, two of the greatest in College annals. A three-time NE10 Academic All-Conference honoree, she took 12th at regionals as a junior before putting her name on the program’s 5K and 6K school records as a senior captain en route to winning a state crown and capturing eighth at the NE10 Championship. A subsequent injury dashed Mary’s dream of becoming the first Purple Knight to qualify for the NCAA Championship, but a postgraduate career shift put her back on a historic course more than a decade later. In late 2019, she qualified for her first Olympic Marathon Trials, ultimately placing 51st among 390 women during the 2020 Trials in Atlanta. Four years later, she again qualified, running her second Trials in Orlando in February 2024. Her running breakthroughs continued six months later, when she won her first 100-mile trail race, the grueling Leadville 100 in Colorado. Mary not only won but posted the second-best time ever for a woman, and finished the year seventh in UltraRunning Magazine’s women’s UltraRunner of the Year rankings.