By Rich Winter

605 Sports

SIOUX FALLS —- Sioux Falls O’Gorman’s Libby Castelli’s first love was not distance running. 

An avid soccer player since she was a little girl, Castelli only gave cross-country and distance running a try after moving from Chicago to Sioux Falls prior to her eighth-grade year. 

“I’ve been playing soccer my whole life,” Castelli said. “I really wanted to play soccer in college, but once I started running I decided that was more my sport.”

While soccer was her first love, running became her passion. Castelli won the 2023 Class AA state cross-country title and has four Class AA individual track titles. Castelli’s kind of talent doesn’t go unnoticed and she recently announced that she will be competing in both cross-country and track for the University of North Carolina.

“I thought I wanted to stay in the Midwest but I always kept in contact with North Carolina,” she said. “I made an official visit to Chapel Hill and I just loved the coaches. I loved the campus and basically everything and I really clicked with the girls already on the team.” 

Castelli opened her senior cross-country season at the Nike Heartland Preview on Sep. 14 with a win and a scintillating time of 17:18. Many wondered where Castelli was during the Augustana Twilight Meet on Sep. 7. 

Cross-country coach Aaron Strand explained that Castelli was busy pursuing her other sports passion, soccer, that weekend. 

“Libby is probably O’Gorman’s best soccer player and one of the best players in the state,” he said. “She had a match on Thursday and a match on Saturday and we just weren’t comfortable with her running, especially so early in the season.”

Running long distances is in the Castelli family as older sister Katie, who is now running at Ohio State, set the bar high finishing second in the Class AA cross-country meet in 2020. Libby Castelli was eighth in that race as an eighth-grader helping O’Gorman to the first of back-to-back team state titles. 

The list of premier distance runners at Sioux Falls O’Gorman is a long one and Libby Castelli had plenty of mentors along the way. 

“Along with her sister, we’ve had some great runners like Aleah Hardie and Ruth Pardy,” Strand said. “Libby was part of those championship runs in 2020 and 2021 along with two girls state track championships.”