Matt Santana can rattle off a few of his favorite routes almost as quickly as he can run them.

Each has its own distinct characteristics.

But there is one defining element in almost every course he takes.

“My favorite run is probably either Miller’s six, or Hawk View,” said the Northwestern senior. “Hawk View is another six-mile run, and it has another bigger hill in it, along with three or four other hills.

“I just like the hillier runs. That’s probably why they are my favorite.”

Santana learned early on in his career to become familiar with those and other runs that would become staples during his career.

“I’d say that it all started when I first joined cross country. One of my first runs was actually one of our hilliest runs with the biggest hill, and that day it felt hard, but then after I kept doing it, it felt a little easier,” Santana said. “So my whole career I’ve just wanted to keep pushing and keep striving to get to the next level to make everything feel a little bit easier for myself, so on courses like Hershey, DeSales, they feel easier for me because of all the hills that I’ve done and trained on.

“We have a hill in every single run that we do in training, so the whole team is pretty used to hillier courses.”

It’s no surprise then that Santana shined the brightest on those courses during the postseason. In back-to-back weeks at DeSales University, Santana recorded a runner-up finish at the Colonial League meet before claiming his first District 11 title with a win in the Class 2A race.

Santana capped his season with his second career state medal, placing seventh in the Class 2A event in Hershey.

The performance punctuated Santana’s remarkable high school cross country career, one that was shaped on the roads he still trains on today, and now includes back-to-back Times News/Lehigh Valley Health Network Male Cross Country Athlete of the Year awards.

“The road of the hill is called Miller Road, and it’s probably about a 150-foot hill,” said Santana. “It’s gradual at first, then it goes straight up at one point. So it’s pretty tough, but it feels good once you get up it.

“You can make it an out-and-back three mile run, which is just going to the top and turning around. You can make it an out-and-back four, which is going up the front and the back, which is worse than the front. And you can make it a loop, which is about six miles and also has another bigger hill in it. You can do a variety of different things with it, but from when I first started, it’s probably a lot easier (now) than it was then. We do workouts on it where we’re doing 10 or 12 reps of it. That’s probably the toughest thing, and that has not gotten any easier since I started.”

Santana’s road map to success has included unwavering trust in his coaches and teammates, and a relentless work ethic that was present from the day he came into the program.

During the regular season, Santana placed first in four Colonial League dual meets with only two runner-up finishes, both to Thomas Smigo of Palisades, who won his second straight state title in the Class 1A race this fall.

Santana had the area’s best finish with an eighth-place result among the 288 runners in the 2A classification at the Foundation Invite in Hershey earlier this season. He was third at the Centaur Invitational at DeSales University in September, and placed second at Moravian Academy’s Lions Invitational to open the season.

“From the end of last year and all year this year, he stayed healthy, and he was so consistent,” said Northwestern head coach Chris Stitzel. “He was consistent all year long, and he just came through big when it counted at the end of the season.”

The individual results also highlighted the broader success of the program. The Tigers are 87-3 over the last four years, winning two league titles and three district crowns.

“I’m just so proud of him, and the team,” said Stitzel. “Hopefully the younger ones saw how they approached everything. We would do a workout and come back, and him and Sam (Bower, a senior) would go and do an extra mile or two on their own. They were just willing to put the extra work in, and that’s what it takes to get to the level that we want to be at. The underclassmen see that, and hopefully it rubs off on them, how hard these guys worked.”

In Hershey, Santana improved on his 12th-place result from his junior year with a methodical march to seventh this fall to cross the line in 16:40, well ahead of the 16:53 he finished in as a junior.

“Probably at states last year is when I noticed how much better I was at hills than I thought I was,” said Santana. “I never thought I would be where I was last year, and then this year, especially on our hillier races, I would just, not take it slow, but I would keep it a slower pace and then when we got to the hills I’d speed up, and then from there on I would just pedal to the metal; just keep going, because if you get up that hill, and then you’re going on the downhill, there’s going to be a huge separation.”

Just like there was with Santana and his competition this season.