Madison Fry was sitting on the fence about running past the track and field season of her senior year of high school.
After visiting a handful of schools interested in the four-time Montgomery County cross country champion during her junior year, Fry realized she wanted to attend a large school, and stay close to home.
This limited her possibilities to compete as a collegiate athlete.
“By the start of my senior year, I knew that I wanted to be close to home because family is important to me and that I wanted to go to school at a larger campus,” Fry said. “Narrowing the geographic area eliminated a lot of opportunities for me to run and study at several really good schools, but I had prioritized what was important to me and knew it may mean I would not compete in college.”
Luckily, one state school close to home saw Fry’s ability and was excited about the opportunity to have her services, and Monday afternoon the Crawfordsville senior realized her dream by signing her national letter of intent to continue her running and academic career at IUPUI in Indianapolis.
“By the beginning of cross country season, I was leaning toward running in college, but I wanted to run only if it was a good fit for the team and me and the school had good academic programs,” Fry added. “I am so grateful to Coach (Antonio) McDaniel for the opportunity to be a member of the IUPUI cross country and track team. I’m looking forward to running with the other women on the team, becoming a better runner, and hopefully making a contribution.”
Having the chance to compete amongst the nation’s best is another opportunity Fry is looking forward to.
“It means a lot to me that I get to run at the next level especially competing in Division I,” she said. “There are so many great runners across all the divisions in college, but I know that I will be pushing myself every week to compete against the top runners in college.”
With family being an important part of Fry’s decision, she was intrigued by the family atmosphere around the IUPUI program — making her choice an easy one.
“With family being important to me, I wanted to be on a team that felt like family, would hang out together, and help each other,” she said. “It was important to me that I was part of team that celebrated each other’s success and pushed each other to improve. By the middle of the season, I knew that if I was given the right opportunity, I would definitely want to run. I was impressed with how Coach McDaniel worked with his runners individually and his expectations from them as a team. After my visit and the time spent with the team and Coach McDaniel, I knew that IUPUI was the right program for me.”
