School was over, but Amanda Vestri stayed at Iowa State past the end of the semester. She was set to compete as the only ISU women’s track and field runner at the NCAA Championships.

Vestri shone that season — her second for the Cyclones — repeating as an All-Region and All-Big 12 performer. She went on to finish 90th at the NCAA Championships and was named an All-American.

But for three weeks, she was alone on campus. Her father, Steve Vestri, said that’s when his daughter had decided to leave. Despite her success in competitive action, Vestri struggled on a personal level.

“That seemed like the tipping point to me with her,” Steve said. “But leading up to that there were those times where you could tell she wished she was home.”

A native of Rochester, Vestri decided to move closer to home and transfer to Syracuse. At every level, Vestri has had success since her first introduction to running in sixth grade. Whether it was getting called up to the varsity team as an eighth grader, being heavily recruited in high school or being a top performer at Iowa State, Vestri has proven herself every level. Fresh off a transfer to Syracuse, she’s continued that form, vaulting herself as one of Syracuse’s top performers through the first half of the season.

“I feel like me and some other older girls on the team are definitely pretty level-headed,” Vestri said. “We want to help everyone out and show them, this is what we need to do, this is how we need to do it, to get them where we want to be ultimately at the end of the season.”

Since she began running, Vesti has always been an overachiever.At Webster Thomas (New York) High School’s annual “pumpkin run,” Vestri lined up with her sixth grade classmates and other older kids. In a race designed to find future runners, Vestri ended the race in third.

When Vestri was called up to Webster Thomas’ varsity cross country team in eighth grade, she impressed coaches from the onset. But Vesti stopped progressing in her sophomore year. Her times stagnated, and she was no longer making the strides she and coaches expected.

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Vestri began to work with Paul Dick, a physical strength coach that allowed her to build her speed and endurance to compete with older runners around New York. Her times started to drop again and Vestri gained national attention in the following years. She finally broke through during her senior year and led Webster Thomas to a New York Section V cross country championship.

ISU coach Andrea Grove-McDonough became the first coach to reach out. Vestri always planned on staying close to home in college, but she didn’t ignore the commitment that Grove-McDonough showed her during recruiting. Among other possible destinations for Vestri were Providence and Syracuse, but the bond that was formed between Vestri and Grove-McDonoughwas enough to sway her into a commitment to the Cyclones.

During her first year for Iowa State, Vestri continued on an upward trajectory. Along with the freshman accolades, she even qualified for the IAAF Under-20 World Championships in Finland for Team USA.

“Just to race on the world level against a lot of great athletes, it definitely set me up for future races,” Vestri said. “Being able to stay a little more relaxed for those races, being on that kind of stage is the biggest you can get.”

After freshman year, though, Grove-McDonough left and Vestri almost did too. She was unsure of her future with the program. Despite that, Vestri was determined to honor her commitment and give new head coach Fletcher Brooks a chance.

While she succeeded running, she wasn’t happy and thought about transferring the whole year. Being 1,000 miles away from her family in Rochester compounded with Grove-McDonough’s departure pushed her back home.

Vestri entered the transfer portal and officially moved closer to home, as she had expected before she initially committed to Iowa State. Syracuse, having demonstrated their interest in Vestri two years prior, was her choice among a handful of teams vying for her commitment.

“Syracuse was an option the whole recruiting process,” Vestri said. “I thought that Iowa State was going to be the place I would go for four years…I decided that it was time to move on.”

In her first few months at Syracuse, Vestri has had an immediate impact. In Syracuse’s first two races of the season, Vestri has finished in the top spot for SU in both meets, including a second-overall finish at the Coast-to-Coast Battle in Beantown which she led Syracuse to their first win since 2011.

“She was a great, motivated, strong willed woman, who wanted to be great and chose another school,” head coach Brien Bell said. “I mean you only get to choose one.”

Published on October 23, 2019 at 10:37 pm

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