Rosalia Nestor’s introduction to varsity cross country was filled with unknowns.

It didn’t take Northwestern’s freshman phenom long to erase that uncertainty.

Nestor’s first race of the season resulted in a massive personal best and a top-three finish at Moravian’s Lions Invitational.

It also set the tone for a breakout campaign that established Nestor among the best runners in the area. Her stellar performances throughout the fall also helped Nestor claim Times News/Lehigh Valley Health Network Girls Cross Country Athlete of the Year honors.

“Overall, I’m pretty happy with my first season running 5ks as a freshman in high school,” said Nestor. I think it was definitely everything that I wanted it to be.

“I learned a lot. And I was really happy because actually, my first race of the season at Moravian, I cut off a minute and a half from my previous PR. So I was really, really happy with that. And then the times just kept on getting better from there.”

Nestor recorded a third-place result out of 106 finishers with a time of 20:08 at the Moravian race in late August.

At the first Colonial League meet of the season less than a week later, Nestor placed second with a stellar time of 18:54.30.

Tigers’ coach Chris Stitzel never had a doubt about what Nestor was capable of.

“She was a great runner for us,” said Tigers’ coach Chris Stitzel. “I knew she was going to be a top runner. Even in eighth grade on our middle school team, she was training with all the I mean she was training with all the high school girls, Angelina (Klein), and Sophia (Cornell), all these high school girls and she was doing really well on all these runs and in these workouts that we were doing.

“But I knew she was gonna be something special for us I knew she was going to be a really good runner, but the way she performed, being one of the top in the league, was just awesome.”

Nestor’s rise carries on the long-standing tradition of cross country success for both boys and girls at Northwestern. She is the third straight runner from Northwestern to earn Times News/LVHN Girls Cross Country Athlete of the Year honors, following in the footsteps of Cornell (2023) and Klein (2022).

But the path to reach the success Nestor achieved this season was a process.

“I honestly really did not have a lot of confidence in myself at the beginning of the season,” she said. “The last race of my summer, I did not perform at all to what I thought I could. I had a pretty bad race. That was kind of a downer; it was my last race of the summertime and I didn’t really perform all that well. So going into the season, I thought, ‘I have all this training behind me but I’m not where I want to be.’ But then I went to Moravian and I smashed my PR and thought, ‘Well that’s a good sign.’”

At the Centaur Invitational at DeSales University on Sept. 7, Nestor recorded another third-place finish in a field of 141 runners.

Nestor took on another challenge two weeks later at the PIAA Foundation Invite in Hershey, where she placed ninth with a time of 20:11 out of 192 finishers in the Class 2A race.

“I really enjoyed myself there,” said Nestor. “It was an invitational, it was the first time I was going to be racing Hershey and I just wanted to have fun with it and race it hard. I did a little bit of research on the course beforehand and I talked to my coaches about it, and I’m just really proud of the preparation that I put into it. And also my performance coming out of it because that was a race where I had competition around me all the time. A lot of times at the races (during the season) it was one or two people and then that was it; or that one person is like a minute ahead of me, so it’s really just me and myself. But for that race, there was, a lot of times there’s a whole bunch of people around me, which was a really nice change to have that, just mentally, and also just the course at Hershey I really enjoyed because it’s so technical and it has all of the hills and everything on it. But yeah. I think Hershey was a really great race and experience.”

Nestor’s regular season league meet results were second, first, second, second, first and second. She also set a course record at Lehighton with her victory on Sept. 24.

“Overall, it was a great year for her,” said Stitzel. “We’re so happy to have her on the team. She’s very, very coachable and just a great kid who works really hard. She has a really bright future.”

Nestor turned her stellar season into a third-place result at leagues and a top-20 finish at districts in the 2A race.

“I feel like I’ve obviously made a lot of growth in my times, but I think most of all I’ve grown mentally,” said Nestor. “From looking back at my mindset at the beginning of the summer to where I am now, I feel like I’ve really come a long way and can accept different things and embrace them. And not only embrace them, but learn from them. I think that’s my biggest takeaway from this season, is how to learn from things.”

And Nestor has already shown that she’s a quick study.