A Student of the Game

So much has been written about Aisling Cuffe that searching her name yields more than 100,000 results on Google. Even the IAAF focused on the Stanford-bound Cuffe when she broke Molly Huddle's national high school record in the two-mile run, finishing in 9:54.22, at the New Balance Outdoor Nationals.

Yet, the newly-installed 2011 DyeStat Girls Athlete of the Year hasn't focused on the online attention that is being paid to her.

Instead she has used the internet to give her an running edge as the Cornwall Central High graduate has been in the habit of researching the competition. In her year-end DyeStat profile, Doug Binder wrote:

In her off hours, she would sit at the computer and glean information off web sites — Armory Track, Tullyrunners, Dyestat. She studied videos of races, listened to interviews, examined statistics — hour by hour building a database in her brain. When she went to national events, Cuffe knew every competitor by sight, had an idea of their strengths and weaknesses, and was almost never surprised.

"It was verging on stalking people," Cuffe joked. "I knew pretty much everything about every kid on the starting line except for their middle names."

Cornwall coach Brian Creeden knows that first-hand. "She knows course records, knows the video tours of the courses," Creeden told Binder. "Over the years, I've had some kids that did some research and knew about the kids, more locally or regionally. She knew everybody around the United States."

The lesson of this story has been told to millions of students — Homework pays off.