GREENFIELD — Olivia Moss knows what she likes and dislikes, or at least until she tries it.
A dance team member from the age of 5 until midway through high school, Moss would admittedly see runners out practicing or competing and immediately think to herself, “they’re crazy.”
But, all it took was a one lap around the Greenfield-Central track her freshman year before she came to a shocking realization.
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“I thought, maybe they’re not so crazy,” Moss laughed. “This isn’t too bad.”
A late starter to competitive running, Moss, a recent graduated senior at Greenfield-Central, made up for lost time the past four years, and she has another four more ahead of her at Anderson University.
All it took was a push in the right direction.
“Freshman year, my mom told me I should try out track, so I went for it, and I ended up loving it,” Moss recalled. “So, I stuck with it. It’s funny. In junior high, I would always look at the runners and think, I’m not doing that.”
Flash-forward to now and Moss is projected to run hurdles and relays in women’s track and field and compete on the AU Ravens women’s cross-country team, beginning this fall.
As is her traditional pattern, Moss can often playfully doubt before she embraces. From her mother’s orange chicken dish to sprints, hesitation and reservations typically turn into passions.
Running was no exception.
“The very first practice my freshman year that I went to, they said we had to do a mile warm-up, and I remember just starring at (coach Reuben) McCracken like whoa, what’s happening?,” Moss reminisced. “I started running with my friends, and I just remember this rush of adrenaline taking over. Feeling this bliss. It just felt amazing.
“From there, it got better and better. When it was over, I went home and would not stop talking about it to my mom.”
Her mom, Jessie Stearns, a former runner at Greenfield-Central, watched as her oldest daughter ran the gamut, quite literally. Olivia competed in the 200-meter run, 400, long jump and both the 400 and 1,600 relays her first season.
The following year, Moss added runs in the 800 relay, and last year, she turned her attention to hurdles while adding a fall season of cross-country.
“I’m the kind of person if you give me something to do, I will do it and give my full effort. So, a lot of the time, I would have my main events like the relays or last year, I started running the 300 hurdles, but if McCracken ever needed me for anything else, I always went for it,” Moss said.
Even at 5-foot-4, Moss’s motor ran at full-throttle, especially through adversity. Over the years, leading up to this past winter, Moss dealt with unexplained shoulder pain.
It ended up being diagnosed as Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, a disorder that occurs when certain blood vessels and nerves are compressed.
“I quit doing dance (my junior year) because I had a shoulder injury, and I had to get surgery,” Moss explained. “I had my first rib removed. They went in through an incision in my armpit and took out my first rib.”
Undergoing the corrective procedure this past December, Moss spent four weeks recovering during winter track conditioning with breathing painful until she healed.
Once she could return, the senior was ready to finish strong before the COVID-19 pandemic cancelled the spring sports season.
“Having the injury made me fall more in love with the sport and running because it was a way of alleviating the pain. I wasn’t always moving my arms around or throwing them over my head like I was in dance,” Moss said. “I love dancing also, but running was an outlet for me to relax and still is.”
Her primary outlet for balance is her family and setting a good example for her three younger sisters and two brothers.
Sophia Moss, 15, was a freshman distance runner at Greenfield-Central this past school year, while Kearsten Stearns, 15, who was also a freshman, was a thrower for the Cougars. Her sister Amelia Stearns, 12, is planning to run at the Indiana School for the Blind, Moss says.
“I constantly strive to be a good role model because I want to make sure they see how a person should act,” Moss said. “That they are allowed to believe in things and that they can reach their dreams if they want to.”
They’re also competitive, but all in good fun.
“We’re different kinds of runners. (Sophia) always has ran cross-country, and I’ve always ran track, and she says I stole cross-country from her and then she stole track from me,” Moss laughed. “It’s kind of a trade off.”
Where Moss won’t budge is on her future. She intends to major in biochemistry with plans to attend medical school to work as a pediatric physician’s assistant.
“I just always loved children, so pediatrics was always going to be a path, but choosing the medical field was always about giving back to the people that can’t always do things for themselves or for the parents that want to make sure their children can have the healthiest life that they can,” Moss said.
For Moss, making the most of an opportunity is her golden rule, which is how she found her calling as a hurdler. She set a personal record in both the 100 and 300 hurdles as a junior after AU women’s track coach Sol Stephens encouraged her to try it.
Moss worked with fellow senior and former state-qualifying hurdler Crystal Peterson, and she excelled.
“They put me in that race, and it just felt right. I had the rhythm and my stride opened up so much. I felt more in control of the situation,” Moss said. “We got to conference (in 2019), and I wasn’t supposed to place in that race, and in my heat, I ended up beating everybody, then beat two girls in the fast heat also and got sixth. PRing by five seconds, that was a lot for hurdles.”
With Moss, nothing is out of the question.
“She is very versatile. Whenever she did come out, she was always ready to work. There was never any lag,” McCracken said. “She was often listed as an alternate in relays because I knew if we needed to fill a spot, I could put her in and it wasn’t going to be a question of what I was going to get out of her. She was going to be reliable.
“It just shows for any kid who wants to step up and go to the next level, if they work hard, it’s possible. I know she’ll give an honest effort to be the best she can be at AU.”
