La Pine’s Vicki O’Halloran prepares to practice on Wednesday afternoon at La Pine High School.

LA PINE — Vicki O’Halloran easily stands out on the La Pine High School cross-country team.

As the Hawks’ only female runner, O’Halloran, a junior, is easy to spot in group runs, her ponytail bouncing behind her.

But O’Halloran’s place at or near the front of the pack during workouts with her teammates — all of them male — makes her more than just a curiosity.

“She’s actually better than almost everyone else on the team,” says Hawk assistant coach Scott Abrams, who is guiding La Pine’s cross-country program during the early season while head coach Brian Earls is out of the country on vacation. “Most of our kids are out to get in shape for other sports, but Vicki really loves to run.”

The third-fastest runner in the Hawks’ cross-country program — boy or girl — O’Halloran hopes to use her male counterparts to help her close the gap on the top female runners in the Sky-Em League.

“They push me,” says O’Halloran, who at last year’s Sky-Em district championships finished 21st, three positions from qualifying for the Class 4A state meet. “There’s no slacking off. (La Pine senior) Spencer Miller (who finished 16th at the boys Sky-Em district meet a year ago) is always ahead of me, but I keep telling myself, ‘I’ve got to get a little faster.’ ”

Turning what could be a negative into a positive, O’Halloran, who ran by herself at meets for much of last year, says flying solo for the Hawks has its advantages.

“It’s kind of nice,” O’Halloran says about being the only girl on La Pine’s cross-country team. “There’s no distractions. When I’m at a race I want to be ready and focused.”

After a disappointing track season last spring, when she failed to improve on her 1,500- and 3,000-meter times from her freshman year, O’Halloran dedicated herself to running over the summer.

In addition to regularly participating in Central Oregon Community College’s midweek group runs, O’Halloran attended the Steens Mountain Running Camp in southeastern Oregon.

“The turning point was last track season,” says O’Halloran, whose best finish at the Sky-Em League district meet was ninth place in the 3,000. “It was awful. I didn’t improve at all (from her freshman year). I felt like I had more in me, but I didn’t know how to reach it.”

After seven days of running, hiking and scrambling through the Steens, O’Halloran appears to have found a way to tap her hidden reservoirs of talent.

“We had one day that was a 30-mile hike/run,” says O’Halloran, who notes that during the past two cross-country seasons she has struggled with hills on courses. “You can’t quit in the middle of a canyon. You have to get out. There were parts that were so steep you had to almost bear-crawl (up the mountain).”

While the physical conditioning of the camp helped get O’Halloran in midseason form even before the start of the school year, she says the confidence she brought back from southeastern Oregon has been just as valuable.

O’Halloran, who is shooting to get her 5,000-meter time under 20 minutes, says a coach at the Steens camp from Lane Community College in Eugene was particularly encouraging to her.

“You usually get that from your coaches and your family, but that’s what they’re supposed to say,” she says. “For me, it was huge that someone I didn’t even know saw I had potential.”

The early-season indications for O’Halloran are promising. She won the 13-to-18 age division at last weekend’s three-mile Sunrise to Summit race up Mount Bachelor. And O’Halloran says she is currently running an 8-mile pace for five miles, a pace that at the end of the 2007 season cross-country season she was able to maintain for only three miles.

“I’m not as exhausted as before, and my legs feel super strong, especially after (the Mount Bachelor race),” says O’Halloran, who opens the prep cross-country season at the Bob Nelson Memorial Invitational in Madras on Saturday. “My goal is I want to take districts.”