By Allie Conwell
Whether she’s on the track or in the lab, Elia Ton-That leaves her peers in the dust with every stride she takes – moving with the kind of effortless humility you’d least expect from an Ivy League athlete and two-time Junior Olympian who’s spent her summer conducting STEM cell research.
The Columbia University junior and distance runner – who received additional recruiting attention from Princeton, Brown, Yale, and USC – is also a proud Northside College Prep alumna.
Ton-That forged her own not-so-humble beginnings during her time in the Chicago Public League (CPL), taking home six CPL city championship titles in cross country and track & field, and an Illinois State Championship title in the 1600m in 2021.
Between her hefty collection of championship titles and dual Junior Olympics All-American status, it was no surprise that the former Mustang qualified for the NCAA D1 Cross-Country Championships her very first year at Columbia.
Her mom, who has completed 22 marathons, and her dad, an Ironman triathlete, raised their family true to form, showing up to the Turkey Trot together yearly and encouraging Elia to get involved in her middle school’s cross country team in fifth grade.
Although she comes from a family of runners, Ton-That “never felt pressured into having to run fast.” The casual nature of her early running experiences and middle school team allowed her to foster a love for the sport without too much competitive pressure.
After all, Elia didn’t always dream of racing.
“In fifth or sixth grade, I was like: ‘I want to do biomedical engineering,’” she said – and the now-19-year-old followed that dream straight into Columbia’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Ton-That’s longtime involvement in dance, piano, and academics kept her plate full growing up.
“Before high school, I was a pretty serious ballet dancer,” Elia said. “That was my first sport.”
It wasn’t until she joined the cross-country team at Northside and began training more intensively that she started to take running seriously.
“I showed up to high school and actually started training. We had upperclassmen on the team who had previously been city champions,” Ton-That said. “Just starting to run every day, train, and do actual workouts really motivated me to take it seriously once I saw that, really, the sky was the limit.”
Ton-That’s transition to distance running after a decade of training in piano and dance may seem like a drastic switch, but she felt it gave her both a physical and mental advantage.
The discipline required by both piano and dance and the complex ways in which dance engages the body equipped Ton-That with the mental and physical strength to run grueling distances – and skirt injury.
“Dance has definitely helped me with proprioception and body awareness, especially in the steeple[chase],” she said. “It’s also strengthened some muscles that you don’t use in running at all.
“In high school, that definitely kept me safe from injury.”
Once beginning to train at the Division 1 level, Ton-That was running double the amount she did in high school. The increase in high-impact training – plus an Ivy League engineer’s course load – left little time and energy to continue dancing, causing her to sustain several more injuries in her first few years.
The “twinge of pain” Ton-That felt on a run this summer turned out to be a stress fracture, so, this upcoming cross-country season, she’s focused on recovery and staying in shape through cross-training with her team.
Despite facing this setback, Ton-That isn’t sweating it.
To the 19-year-old distance runner, the competition was never the most important thing – it’s the emphasis on the team.
“I won state individually my junior year, but my happiest, proudest moment from all of high school is when our team won the city championships my senior fall,” she said. “Going into college, being part of a team where I wasn’t number one was definitely a change of mindset – not because I was competitive or wanted to beat my teammates, but seeing that, really, everyone had a role to play. Every place counts.”
No matter how she places, Ton-That knows that her tight-knit team has her back.
“Even though there is definitely some pressure to perform, I feel like most of it is what I put on myself,” she revealed. “Most of the time, it’s my teammates and coaches telling me, ‘hey, don’t be so hard on yourself.’”
The academic pressure at Columbia has been much easier to face with the support of her teammates as well.
“In my class of cross-country girls, we actually have six total engineers out of nine in our class. So that has made us really close,” Ton-That said. “I can’t imagine going through the engineering curriculum without them. There’s always someone on the team you can go study with, go to meals with if you’re feeling lonely… Being part of a team in college helps so much socially.”
Although the Northside alumna is now a part-time New Yorker, Chicago will forever have her heart.
“Honestly, the facilities and stuff in New York are great, and I love the vibe – but Chicago will always be my number one.”
