Virginia Pedersoli Sanchez

If you stick to the historic numbers, distance runner Virginia Pedersoli Sanchez of Amphitheater High School has no Tucson equal in girls’ on-field track and field performance.
In 1991, 1992 and 1993, she won state championships at 800 meters, 1600 meters and 3200 meters. (She also won back-to-back state cross-country championships). She won nine consecutive individual state titles, unprecedented in Arizona.
She was then awarded Arizona’s 1993 Gatorade Track and Field Athlete of the Year trophy.
All were accomplished in the 5A classification, the largest in Arizona at the time. In ’93, Pedersoli’s time in the 1,600 meters was No. 5 in the United States. She finished 21st nationally in the 1992 Kinney’s Invitational Cross Country meet in San Diego.
It was a Cinderella story like few others.
As an Amphi freshman, Virginia showed up at the school’s cross-country tryouts wearing wrestling boots and a short skirt. She had never run a competitive race in her life.
“I never even exercised,’’ she said. “So I didn’t have a thing to change into.’’
By the end of her senior year at Amphi, Virginia was honored by the Tucson Conquistadores in its yearly awards banquet. That awards ceremony included Olympic gold medal swimmer Crissy Ahmann, Olympic bronze medal sprinter Michael Bates, future College Football Hall of Fame lineman Rob Waldrop, NCAA men’s golf championship coach Rick LaRose and Wimbledon double champion Jim Grabb.
That put Virginia’s high school accomplishments in perspective.
She even went beyond high school competition.
During the summer of 1991, Virginia and others from Amphitheater High, achieved a distance-running achievement in the Grand Canyon that turned heads everywhere.
The Amphi group went down South Kaibab at dawn and reached the North Rim in 10 hours. They ate lunch and headed back, finishing in the early morning at about 3 a.m. for a 21.5-hour double cross. Virginia said, “It was awesome. Walk until you are dead and then walk some more. It’s hard to explain. While I was doing it, I wanted to quit, but after I was done, I wanted to do it again.”
Such was the drive that made her one of the state’s all-time leading distance runners.
“She really is a coach’s dream’,’’ said Amphi coach Steve Gentry. “She’s pretty phenomenal. She’s probably the last of that kind I’ll ever coach.’’
Pedersoli chose to attend Arizona –after turning down an offer from ASU – and became a four-year letter winner as a Wildcat.