For individual achievement by a Central Oregon athlete in 2019, Fiona Max would be hard to beat.

She always is.

As a junior last spring, the standout Summit High distance runner won the 3,000 meters at the Class 6A state track championships. She also finished second in the 1,500, but that was just a footnote to what Max would accomplish a few months later.

As a senior in the fall, Max finished first and led the Storm to a dominating victory at the Mountain Valley Conference district cross-country championships in Salem. The following week in Eugene, she led Summit to its 12th consecutive state title and second in 6A. She went out in style, too, winning the race for the second year in a row and obliterating the Lane Community College course record in the process.

She became the second Central Oregon girl to win back-to-back cross-country championships at the state’s highest classification. (Bend High’s Abby McAllister was 4A girls champion in 1996 and 1997.)

The high school season was over, but Max and her Summit teammates were just getting warmed up. In mid-November, Max and teammates Teaghan Knox, Jasper Fievet, Isabel Max, Barrett Justema, Magdalene Williams and Stella Skovborg, running as Storm over Bend, won the Nike Cross Northwest Regional Championships in Idaho.

Fiona Max, Isabel’s twin, finished second overall. And she was 10th in leading Storm over Bend to a runner-up finish at the elite Nike Cross National Finals on Dec. 7 in Portland.

— Bill Bigelow, The Bulletin