Lily Bosnich did not plan to run on April 30. She planned to play softball. The senior at Saint Bede Academy in Peru, Illinois, had a game against Marquette on the same night as her track team’s senior meet, and the math did not look great.
So she packed her spikes, figured she would miss the race, and went to play softball.
Then the math worked out. Saint Bede beat Marquette 10-0, with Bosnich going 1-for-3 with a home run, two RBIs, three runs scored and three stolen bases. She drove from the diamond to the track, walked onto the infield in her softball uniform, and won the 300-meter hurdles in 46.98 seconds. Second place was more than eight seconds back.
She had not brought the bottoms of her track kit, because she had not thought she would race.
“I had my track bag with me with my tank top in it and spikes, so I at least had my spikes,” Bosnich told Shaw Local. “I was just happy to have made it on time to be announced, but I was even happier that I was able to run one last race on the track where my hurdle career first started in grade school, even if it was in my softball uniform.”
The day worked because both of her coaches let it work. Bosnich said softball coach Rob Ruppert told her up front to skip the game if she had to. She told him no.
“I laughed and told him there’s no way I’m missing this game and that I would make it work,” she said. “He laughed and said, ‘I know you will Bos, you’re never looking for something simple.'”
Track coach Marty Makransky agreed to hold her senior night introduction until she got there. She scratched from the 100-meter hurdles, which had run earlier in the meet, and saved herself for the 300.
The 300 hurdles is not a friendly race. Eight barriers, most of a lap on the track, and a long sprint home after your legs are already cooked. Running it in softball pants is a strange decision, but Bosnich had already played seven innings, so the pants were the least of it. It is the kind of all-out speed work that hurts in the morning.
Ruppert, the softball coach, was unbothered by any of it.
“Lily is just a special athlete. Probably could play D1 softball somewhere. Just a typical day on the softball field, hitting a home run, stealing bases, making plays on defense,” he told Shaw Local. “She’s just an all-around, five-tool player … speed, power, average, great arm and could probably play any position on the field.”
The home run was her seventh of the season. She is batting .455 with 23 RBIs and 10 stolen bases on 10 tries. On the track, she set three meet records at the Rollie Morris Invitational earlier in April, winning the 100-meter dash, the 100 hurdles and the 300 hurdles. In the fall she will run for the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, joining a wave of high school track stars stepping into the college ranks.
The Illinois High School Association shared the story on Instagram, and the comments leaned in the same direction. “I’ll never stop talking about the importance of multi sport athletes,” one read. It is a familiar refrain in track right now, as athletes from Jane Hedengren to Lex Young show how varied early backgrounds can sharpen a finished product.
It also slots neatly into a recent run of viral high school track moments, like last year’s somersault-to-the-finish hurdles win in Oregon. If you want to see how the rest of the field stacks up, sprint-focused track workouts and a basic sprinting primer are a decent place to start.
Bosnich, for her part, has one regret about the race photo making the rounds. She would have brought the track pants if she had known.
