Reagan Pender was at her best when it mattered most.

The Northern Lehigh junior peaked when the pressure was on, powering to wins at the Colonial League and District 11 Cross Country Championship meets.

Her finale was a stellar sixth-place finish in the Class A race at the PIAA Cross Country Championships, a result that earned Pender her first state medal.

“That was just the culmination of a great year,” said Bulldogs head coach Dave Oertner. “You always hope to have your best race at the end of the year, and you never know how it’s going to work out. Fortunately, it worked out well.

“Cross country is one of those sports where these kids, at the end, at that level, are so close to each other, it’s who feels better on a given day. Fortunately, whatever we did worked. She was healthy and strong at the end of the year, and that’s what you want to have happen.”

But Pender laid the groundwork for those performances long before she stepped on the starting line.

It was the time put in during the offseason, far away from the medal stand in Hershey, that propelled Pender to her greatest accomplishments, which now include Times News Girls Cross Country Athlete of the Year.

“She’s learned how to run, and how to train smart,” said Oertner. “You can overtrain, if you’re not careful; you can undertrain. If anything, we may have undertrained her, although toward the end of the year, her legs were starting to get a little sore, just from getting beat up all year. I think staying healthy was the key. That’s a big part of it. When you have enough talent, staying healthy is what you have to be at the end of the year.

“It’s just consistency, in workouts, in staying focused on where you’re trying to get to. Just staying with it, so to speak. You can’t take big breaks. There’s an old quote saying the secret to success is constancy to purpose, and that’s what it is. It’s just staying right on it. Just constantly going toward your goal, and not overtraining, but training smart, just focusing on what you need to do to get there.”

Pender opened the season with a second place at Moravian Academy’s Lions Invitational, and followed that with a runner-up finish in the first league meet of the season on Sept. 5 at Moravian Academy.

“I felt good going into the season, so I think that was the most important thing,” said Pender. “I try not to look too far ahead, so I just kind of knew I felt good, and wanted to see what I could do. And the confidence was trying to build up to that, so getting second at Moravian, that was kind of like, ‘Oh, I’m here, I can do this.’

“I never really walked into a race expecting to win it, because I always knew something could go wrong. So I think each week kind of mounted on the idea that, ‘OK, I can win. Something can go wrong. But I can have the ability to win, maybe even if something does go wrong.’”

With her focus clear and her form on point, Pender dominated.

A victory in the second league meet of the year at Catasauqua marked her first triumph of the year. It was a result she would repeat each of the final five weeks of the regular season.

And one that will always stand out for Pender.

“I think the first win that I ever got at Catty, that was pretty cool, because I even got lost on the course,” said Pender, who won the race with a time of 20:04, well ahead of runner-up Madeline Consuelos of Northwestern, who finished in 20:30.

“So even though I didn’t do as well as I wanted to there, it was my first win, so I think that will always hold a special place in my heart.”

Despite a second-place finish to Notre Dame Green Pond’s Grace Medei in the first meet of the year, she never wavered.

She got stronger.

Pender ran a 19:57 at the league meet, outpacing Medei’s time of 20:23, and ran a 19:14 at districts, again well ahead of the Notre Dame sophomore (19:29).

At states, Pender’s sixth-place finish in the Class A race came with a time of 20:21, while Medei placed 10th in 20:38.

“I knew coming in that she was going to do well,” said Oertner. “Obviously, the first race, the invitational (at Moravian) when she finished second, was a big race. But maybe a bigger race was the one at DeSales when she had kind of a weak race; her only, I’ll call it poor race of the year, when she lost in a dual meet. She still took second. But it was her poorest race of the year, and she was able to bounce back and have a really strong race again, and do well there. I think that race gave her a little more confidence to know that she could do that.

“From there on out, every race was solid.”

A leader on and off the course, Pender capped her season with Colonial League Girls Cross Country MVP honors.

“Her most endearing quality is that she’s humble,” said Oertner. “As far as success, you have to be driven, and I think that’s there.”