When Legacy’s Annalina Torres crossed the finish line at the Class 5A state track and field championships last month, no other runner surrounded her.

Her victory in the 400-meter dash was decisive. A no-doubter. And everything she had been dreaming of since the start of her final season with the Lightning.

Well, maybe not everything.

“I was so nervous. I was so sick at state,” Torres recalled. “I’d thrown up maybe 20 minutes before that 400, I think part from sickness, part from just nerves too. I was really scared because I had come into this season like, that was my goal. My goal was to win state for the 400, and I was really scared I wasn’t going to be able to do it. And then I got out there, and once I was running I kind of knew I had it, and it felt good. It felt really, really good to win.”

After everything was set and done, and when she could catch her breath, pride and relief overwhelmed her. She finished her race in 54.46 seconds, 0.5 seconds ahead of second-place Abigail Trapp out of Golden.Later in the day, she finished third in the 200-meter dash with a 24.53. For that, she was named the Daily Camera girls track and field athlete of the year. Her second-year coach, Todd Sheridan, always knew she had it in her.

All the mid-distance specialist needed was a little more sprinting.

“She’s got this incredible natural speed,” Sheridan explained. “She’s just a talented runner, regardless of what event that she does. We actually incorporated more 200s into her program this season and some more competitions, and that really helped her 400. She had the strength of the 800, and then we just added a little more speed in the 200. That absolutely made her just deadly in that 400.”

Throughout her senior year, Torres didn’t lose a single 400. A mere two years ago, she joined track as a way to condition for soccer and run with friends. She realized quickly that her true talent and passion lay on the track, so she hung up her soccer cleats and never looked back.

Now, she’ll look ahead toward her Division I career at Oklahoma State. She’s set quite the standard with the Lightning, and Sheridan knows her influence will be felt for years to come.

“I think that a lot of the kids were kind of intimidated by her, because you see that kind of talent on a track team and immediately, you’re like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t possibly be as fast as she is. Or be anywhere near her stratosphere,’” he said. “She’s not a loud runner. She’s not a brash runner. She’s not in your face. She’s not talking anything at all while we’re going through the season.

“But what we saw with her was when we put her on relays — and I put her on a bunch of relays just to, again, have some fun and be connected to her teammates — she immediately connects. … She’s a really nice person. I’ll speak to this — from seeing other athletes at the same kind of level, it’s sometimes hard to feel like you can relate at a high school level to someone that talented. But the second she was around her teammates on those relays, it was a very different story once they did that.”

Torres said she plans to shift her focus toward the 800 in college and believes that her entire athletic career, from the pitch to the track, has prepared her well for what she’ll experience with the Cowboys. She ended her high school career on the highest note possible.

“It was nice finally seeing all the work I had (done) pay off in exactly the way I wanted it to,” she said.