Sustained excellence: Meet The Charlotte Observer’s girls’ prep athlete of the year

We’ll never know what might have happened if Mary Bonner Dalton hadn’t won that race in the third grade.

Perhaps she wouldn’t have gone on to win four national championships, seven state championships. Maybe she wouldn’t have earned all-America honors eight times — 10 as an individual, two on relay teams.

Maybe she wouldn’t have gone on to become arguably one of the two or three fastest female distance runners in North Carolina high school history.

But more than nine years ago, Dalton won that race.

That victory spawned a career that has earned the recent Myers Park High graduate Charlotte Observer girls’ prep athlete of the year honors.

“I was in Girls on the Run,” she said, referring to the elementary school program that encourages girls to run for fitness. “It was my first 5k (5-kilometer race), and I ran it with my dad. And I won.”

That victory didn’t get Dalton hooked on running.

“I was a swimmer,” she said.

She swam in a high-level year-around program and was good at it. But she also kept running, and when the running successes kept piling up, Dalton finally gave up the competitive swimming.

“I still swim for cross-training,” said Dalton, who typically runs 35-40 miles a week. “But I’m a runner.”

And she’s spectacular at it.

Some highlights:

▪ As a freshman, she won the 4A 3,200-meter state championship.

▪ As a sophomore, she was 4A 3,200-meter indoor state champion and won an Adidas Indoor Nationals 5k championship.

▪ In her junior year, she won the indoor and outdoor 4A 3,200-meter championships and a half-dozen all-America honors.

▪ As a senior, she was 4A state cross-country champion and won the 3,200-meter 4A outdoor championship.

▪ She also teamed on several state championship relay teams

▪ She set course records at McAlpine Greenway Park and Ivey Redmon Park near Winston-Salem. And she set state meet records in cross-country and the 3,200 meters.

All of this, and she also graduated from the rigorous International Baccalaureate program and finished near the top of her class.

“I’m very competitive,” she said.

Dalton said distance running can become tedious, but when that happens, she said he “takes a step back and remembers why I’m running.”

“I’m running because I like to compete,” she said.

Along the way, she became friends with her top competitors.

“It’s like a fellowship,” she said. “I’ve gotten to be friends with a lot of those runners.”

So, with all those friendships and successes behind her, Dalton is headed north, to Notre Dame.

“I wanted a good balance between academics and athletics,” she said. “Both of those have always been important to me.”

Yes, she’s aware of the weather in South Bend, Indiana.

“It snowed when I was there in April,” she said with a laugh. “But they have a nice indoor track.”

“Notre Dame does such a good job of caring for people’s whole lives,” she said.

And maybe one day, Dalton said, she’ll get a chance in another venue. This Girls on the Run winner would like to get a chance to compete in the Olympics.

“I plan to work at that,” she said. “I like setting goals for myself.”