Forbes’ Jess Pascoe has had a stellar start to the American College running season.
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Jess has been named the 2018 South East Conference (SEC) Women's Runner of the Year following Athlete of the Week honours.
In October Jess earned the US Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association Division I Women's National Athlete of the Week honors following her SEC Individual Championship performance.
She is the first University of Florida female athlete to win an individual SEC title since 2009.
In the process she ran the fastest 6km pace of anyone ever to compete for the University finishing the course in 18.54.98, her College website the Florida Gators reports.
After her individual performance she helped the much improved women's team surprise the conference with a runner-up finish.
This performance was reflected in Jess being named the 2018 SEC Women's Runner of the Year last week.
Jess has been the Florida Gators top-finisher all season.
She started the season with a win at North Florida before making history at the Mountain Dew Invitational when she became only the third women in University of Florida history history to earn three top five finishes.
While winning the SEC Championship had been a goal it wasn't until after she won the Mountain Dew Invitational in September that the Forbes runner started to view it as being attainable.
"With how comfortable and easy that race felt, I was like, 'I know I can like really be a top competitor this year,'" Pascoe told her University communications team in a story for their website.
Pascoe was then runner-up at the Arturo Barrios Invitational at Texas A&M, recording a 20:04 and putting her third in the SEC 6k times.
At the SEC Championships, she won the race by five seconds and earned First-Team All-SEC Honors.
Last week her team finished second in the team standings at the NCAA South Region Cross Country Championships to automatically qualify for the NCAA Championships for the first time since 2012.
The championships will be held in Madison Wisconsin this week.
Pascoe, who grew up in Forbes, moved to the United States just over two years ago to take up a running scholarship. She was home in June on her summer break, and reported she’s loving life in Florida.