To understand Whitney Bishoff’s remarkable success as a cross-country athlete, it’s important to also understand her passion — and grit.

The gift of speed and stamina are evident in the Anderson College freshman, and they served her well in a high school career at Athens (Ga.) Christian School that saw her become one of the finest runners the state has ever seen.

But one memory in particular stands out in the mind of her prep coach, Tim Cummings.

“Her senior year she was out running the cross-country course and after a mile and a quarter she was a minute ahead of the pack,” Cummings said. “Next thing you know this kid stumbles out of the crowd and wasn’t paying any attention, and he runs into Whitney. The kid fell down and busted his lip, and Whitney got knocked down, too.”

The bizarre collision allowed the field to gain ground on Bishoff, but she wasn’t about to let a blindside tackle stop her from finishing with a flourish.

Instead, she picked herself up, continued the race and ended up winning by eight seconds.

“It was a crazy thing, but the Lord just picked her up and let her run,” Cummings said. “At the end of the race she collapsed and we had to pick her up and carry her away. But things like that helped make her, I think, the premiere runner in Northeast Georgia.

“She’s the best I ever coached and one of the greatest kids I’ve ever been around.”

Now Bishoff is displaying her skills at the collegiate level and hasn’t missed a beat, claiming Conference Carolinas Cross-Country Runner of the Week honors four times with three individual titles this season.

“She’s a joy to be around and one of the most coachable kids I’ve ever worked with,” said Anderson cross-country coach Randy Greer. “We expected her to do well, but I don’t think we expected her to do quite this well this quickly.”

Shy and unassuming, Bishoff began running as a sixth grader. By the time she graduated from Athens Christian she had claimed nine individual state championships, several state records and recorded a four-peat in the Georgia 1A state cross-country meet.

“You always want to win, and we were one of the smaller schools in our division,” Bishoff said. “I think that helped drive me to work hard because we all wanted to do well against the bigger schools.”

A valedictorian in high school, the education major was recruited nationally by programs such as Stanford and Yale, but decided to continue running closer to home.

“Anderson University offers a Christian environment, which is very important to me,” she said. “And the fact that I had been at a small high school convinced me I wanted to be at a smaller college.”

Saturday Bishoff garnered the individual title in the Conference Carolinas Cross-Country Championship 5k race at Belmont Abbey, besting the field with a time of 18:55. She was named MVP, Freshman of the Year and led the all-conference team.

Bishoff picked up league Runner of the Week nods in weeks three, five, six and seven, and earlier this month finished second in the Trojan Invitational at the Civic Center of Anderson. Her time of 18:55 was Bishoff’s second fastest of the season.

She won the first race of her AU career, winning the Lander/Connie Maxwell Invitational in September. She was the only runner in the field to break the 20-minute mark and had a 39-second margin of victory.

During the 6K Augusta State Invitational at Blanchard Park Sept. 27, Bishoff set a course record of 24:10 and won by 13 seconds.

On Oct. 4 at Auburn University her 18:08 run was good enough to finish first on the 5K course.

“She’s one of those kids who comes out to practice and does everything that’s asked of her,” Greer said. “She can be running and you can just yell out to her to do this, this, and this during a workout and she just nods her head and gets it done.”

Bishoff was inspired to run because her mother also ran track in high school, and Cummings knew almost immediately she was a natural.

“She started with us in sixth grade and in the eighth grade she ran a 5K in 22 minutes, so we knew she was going to be something special,” Cummings said. “Everything she’s done is pretty phenomenal.”

While she runs like a veteran, Bishoff says going from a high school star to a college phenom has been an adjustment — even though she still gets to run with Candace Homer, a former Athens Christian teammate and fellow freshman on the Trojans cross-country squad.

“It’s a lot different,” she said. “Now everyone can run with me for several miles. But I practice the same and run the same. When I’m running, I just try to think about the race, and I also try to listen to the people behind me.”

Bishoff’s high school years are over, but her ties to Athens Christian School are not. Her brother, Colin, is one of the top runners for the Eagles, and she stays in frequent touch with Cummings.

“She e-mails me quite a bit and calls me almost every race,” Cummings said. “I had a chance to come up there and watch her race this season, and another great thing about her being just an hour away is she can come watch her old team run, too.

“She was a champion for us, her brother has a chance to be a champion, and she’ll do some great things at Anderson.”