Rylee Blade

c/o 2025
School: Santiago of Corona
Hometown: Corona, CA
AthleticNET Bio

‘23 CA State 3200m Champion (10:02.19)
‘23 US #3 Sophomore, 3200m (10:02.19)

Rylee Blade’s path to becoming ‘23 California state champion in the 3,200m was not the plan initially. In  the fourth grade her high school track coach who had a club track and cross country team asked her to come out for his team. She had success in the 800m, but most of her time was spent on the soccer pitch as a back chasing down and double teaming opposing forwards.

As she progressed in middle school, Blade got better and better at running and had success at the national level.

“I ended up coming out and  running pretty good in some meets,” Blade recounts. “In eighth grade I won [USATF Youth] nationals for the 3k in the 13-14 age group[10:39.33, Rome, GA, June 23-26].”
Unlike other soccer athletes who decide to drop soccer later in their teens, Blade realized that she would have to make a decision between the two sports in middle school. She didn’t see herself being able to up her training  mileage and play soccer too. So, after 10 years of playing soccer, she quit.

“I consulted with my parents and talked a lot about it,” said Blade of her decision. “ It took me a few months to actually make the decision. I was going back and forth for a while. I just didn’t want to overdo it.”

The decision reaped rewards in her  freshman season. Blade finished 33rd at the CIF State Championships in 18:36.2 leading her team to a 15th place finish. But then while doing hill training in the winter, she stepped wrong and broke her foot on the growth plate. The injury required her to be in a cast unable to do any type of training. She returned to track with less than a month to left in the season and managed to run 2:24.49 for the 800m on May 7.

After her freshman season, she became determined to get her times down to where she wanted. She took training more seriously and things began to click. She finished third at the state meet  her sophomore year of cross country with a 17:36.47. That won her a place at NXNs, but the cold temperatures and winds were tough on Blade who had never raced in those conditions before and ran in only her singlet and shorts. She finished 158th in 19:42.40.

“The weather definitely affected me on that,” says Blade. “I wasn't expecting it to be really windy so I wasn't thinking about it until we had gotten out of the bus. And then I felt the wind and it kind of just messed me up that whole day.”

Blade continued to train consistently during the winter and her expectations were for a 4:50 in the 1600m  and 10:30 for the 3,200m for this past track season. Her coach, Ricky Etheridge, thought she could run 4:40 and 10:20. The expectations were high and Blade surpassed them with flying colors. She qualified for state finals in the 1600m  with a second place time of 4:46.28 and a first place in the 3,200 in a time of 10:27.84 at the CIF-SS Master meet on May 19 and May 20. For CIF State, she declared for the 3,200m in hopes of being fresh and dipping under her best time of the season, a 10:21.08 first place finish in the seeded section of the Arcadia Invitational.

In a competitive final, Blade hung with the lead pack and then edged away from Oaks Christian junior Payton Godsey for a stunning 10:02.19 win. 

“Going into the last lap she[Godsey] had a lead on me and then I tried to push it the last 300. That's when it came down to the final kick down the stretch and  I ended up just having a little bit more and got her, ” said Blade who ran her best time by 19 seconds. “ I was honestly shocked that I won because Peyton had run at Arcadia earlier in the season and had run nine fifty something so I wasn't really expecting to win it.”

For her last meet of the track season, the Nike Outdoor Nationals in Eugene, OR, Blade ran two personal bests; a  fifth place finish in the two mile in 10:10.46, on Friday, June 16;  and for fifth place in the mile,4:48.60, on Sunday, June 18, earning the All-American honors she had sought.

Heading into her junior season, Blade is unsure of what her goals should be after obliterating them this season.

“I don't know where I want my goals to really be for cross country. Thinking about it right now and what I want to run, I want to run  that, ” she said. "To  go past what I thought I could do this past  was definitely  pretty crazy for me and pretty special.”