St. Pius senior named Georgia girls cross country runner of year

Mary Brady, a senior at St. Pius, is the Gatorade girls cross country runner of the year.

Brady led St. Pius to a second straight Class 5A championship last fall and won the individual 5A title in a time of 18:47.62, nearly eight seconds ahead of the runner-up. Brady won six of her nine high school meets, never losing to a fellow Georgia competitor, and finished with the state’s two fastest 5K times by a girl

Brady’s personal best of 17:34.14 put her 11th at the RunningLane National Cross Country Championship. Brady was second at the Coach Wood Invitational and third at the Alexander / Asics Invitational, two other prestigious national-level events.

Brady is the first St. Pius athlete to win the Gatorade award in girls cross country but the eighth overall. She joins Asia Durr, a two-time girls basketball winner, as the only other female student-athlete at St. Pius to win the award. Boys’ cross country runner Austin Sprague won the award in 2014. Boys soccer has produced five winners, according to the school.

Brady has signed to run at Georgia Tech. She is now a finalist for the Gatorade national girls cross country runner of the year, to be announced later this month.

The Gatorade Player of the Year program annually recognizes one winner in the District of Columbia and each of the 50 states that sanction high school football, girls volleyball, boys and girls cross country, boys and girls basketball, boys and girls soccer, baseball, softball, and boys and girls track & field, and awards one national player of the year in each sport.