By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Sports Editor
Two of Sitka High’s top distance runners, Silas Demmert and Anna Prussian, will take their track and field prowess to a higher level after graduation this year. Both have signed to run cross country and track with Seattle Pacific University beginning in the fall. The NCAA Division II school expressed interest in both athletes after the 2022 cross country season.
Sitka seniors Silas Demmert, left, and Anna Prussian, right, sign to run with Seattle Pacific University, earlier this year at SHS. (Sentinel photo)
“I’ve always kind of been planning to run at a collegiate level since I got serious about running,” said Demmert.
Last summer he visited a couple of schools that had expressed interest in him, and after this year’s state cross country meet both he and Prussian heard from a volunteer coach at Seattle Pacific.
“She reached out to both of us over Instagram… In December, we both went, I think, a day apart, and got to run with a team, tour the school and meet with the coaches,” Demmert said.
Those visits sealed the deal for both of the Sitka runners.
Neither is keen on living in Seattle – the school is just north of downtown – but they were impressed by an SPU team atmosphere that was similar to the one they prize at Sitka High.
“The team definitely showed me some running places that you could go that were fully wooded trails, which really surprised me,” Prussian said. “And I hung out with them after practice, and they really kind of reminded me of our team, like they had a really great team spirit going. So that was really fun.”
And, unlike many colleges, the Seattle Pacific men and women’s teams practice together. “That’s definitely something that was kind of familiar, because that’s what we do here,” Prussian said. “And the guys, they weren’t standoffish. They were very welcoming as well.”
Demmert said he was also impressed with the SPU team spirit.
“The guys team reminded me a lot of our guys team, not really seeing it as a team, but a group of guys that just enjoy running together and hanging out,” he said. “Seattle was a little off for me, but there were escapes.”
Demmert, who plans to study ecology, signed with the school in March with a full academic scholarship.
Prussian signed her contract in February with a combined athletic and academic scholarship. She plans to study anthropology with an emphasis on biology, and is looking forward to the broad range of running opportunities in collegiate track competition.
“Just seeing the types of girls that I’ll be running against was a little bit of a shocker, especially coming from a small area where the times aren’t as ranged as they are down south,” she said. “But I’m really excited for the bigger races, huge ranges of competition. I’m really excited to see how much my times can drop being in that kind of environment.”
