As Palo Alto High School senior Amaya Bharadwaj laces up her shoes and takes her spot on the starting line of the track, her smile turns into a look of determination. As the whistle sounds, Bharadwaj explodes forwards, quickly taking the lead.

During her time running on Paly’s cross-country and track and field teams, Bharadwaj has set seven school records.

This track season, she hopes to break the school record in the mile for girls, which currently stands at 4 minutes, 42 seconds, just seconds ahead of her personal best from last season of 4:49.

“I want to set the school record in the mile because my [former] teammate, who graduated last year, currently has the school record,” Bharadwaj said. “And last year, we would be right together in most of the races, so I really want to get that record.”

During cross country season this past fall, Bharadwaj qualified for Nike Cross Nationals (NXN), where she finished 20th overall among girls with a time of 17:45.

“I was the first girl from Paly to do that [go to NXN],” she said. “So I think that’s a really big accomplishment.”

NXN is the premier high school cross-country championship, recruiting top-qualified athletes and teams.

After her outstanding performance at NXN, Bharadwaj was ranked nationally by Dyestat Rankings, coming in as the 27th fastest girl in the nation, and third among girls on the list from California.

Bharadwaj shares that she’s had the dream of running Division 1 in college since 8th grade, when she developed her love for running.

This fall, Bharadwaj will be fulfilling her dream, as she will be on the Division 1 track team at Stanford University.

“I think there’s just no place in the world where you get the same level of academics and athletics,” Bharadwaj said.

However, Bharadwaj’s achievements and accomplishments came along with sacrifices as well. Track takes up the majority of her time throughout the week, leaving her homework as a task for the weekend.

“In junior year, I would study for six to eight hours on Sundays because I had so much homework from the past week and to do for the upcoming week,” Bharadwaj said.

While the process took lots of sacrifice and hard work, Bharadwaj encourages aspiring runners to not give up and keep pushing through.

“I think when it doesn’t work at the beginning, people get demotivated and just stop,” Bharadwaj said. “But if you stay consistent and do a little [running] every day, it can go a really long way.”

Bharadwaj explains that before her running journey began, she struggled to find success through other sports.

“I feel like you start running if you are not good at any other sport,” Bharadwaj said. “So that was kind of why I started, and I found out that I was really good at running.”

Bharadwaj first started running in India when she was in sixth grade, where opportunities in the sport looked very different from those of many of her current teammates.

“There were no girls to train with, so I would train with the boys,” Bharadwaj said. “Some of my races in India got canceled because there weren’t enough girls to compete with because they’re not encouraged to do that [running].”

When she was 14, Bharadwaj moved to the United States, attending Paly, where she found a running environment that offered more opportunities for girls than she had back in India.

“Once I moved here, I think just having that opportunity to compete on such a high level was really exciting for me,” Bharadwaj said.

Paly track coach Michael Davidson said that Bharadwaj’s leadership and work ethic have become especially apparent over the past year.

“She’s really stepped up and led,” Davidson said. “Over the last season, she started pushing her work in the summer, really going that extra mile to make her goals of being on a podium and performing really well on some of these big meets a reality.”

Paly senior Alli Katila-Miikkulainen, a teammate on the track team, said that Bharadwaj is the hardest working person she has ever met.

“She is always, even after the workouts, doing extra running, like eight miles a day,” Katila-Miikkulainen said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to a practice where she hasn’t been here.”

While she is now a superstar runner, Bharadwaj wasn’t always the top runner on the team. When she first joined, she found herself in the background, surrounded by more established runners.

“She came in behind a lot of girls who were really talented and developed at the time, so she just kind of sat back and did her thing, all while she was developing under these other girls,” Davidson said. “Now she’s come to the forefront, and now she’s the one setting the pace.”

Her consistency and commitment to improving each season have transformed her into one of the team’s best runners.

“She’s been in the background, doing her work, and all of a sudden over these last few seasons, she’s really beginning to shine,” Davidson said. “But it’s not a new shine, she’s just been polishing it quietly in the corner, and now she’s putting her lamp on the table in the middle of the room to let everybody know, ‘Hey, I’m here.’”