When I interview an athlete, I always want to know what got him or her started in the sport at which he or she excels. What piqued the interest in that particular sport?

When Amanda White Pagon ran for Dulaney, I wrote a few stories about her and watched her amazing success stories pile up one after another, but I never knew why she first started running. I asked her that when I talked with her a few weeks ago for today's Alumni Report.

She said she wanted to run to Australia.

“In elementary school, we had this gym teacher from Australia and she did this program to get kids interested in running. She said, ‘We’re going to run to Australia.’ We had these little cards, 50 miles on a card and they were broken into 50 squares and each square was broken into fours for a quarter mile. You could run at recess and the teacher could tally it for you or you could run at home and parents could initial them.

“What always worked with me was some motivational thing like that, trying to reach some goal, so this was very cool, because in our hallway, she had this big line and as the kids ran more and more on their cards, the line got longer and we started getting closer to Australia.”

Except for the occasional 5K, she didn’t run much after her sophomore year at Dulaney, concentrating mostly on swimming and playing a few other sports. Still, an elementary school teacher with an irresistible goal introduced her to the sport she still can't leave behind.

Oh, and by the way, it’s 9,785 miles from Baltimore to Sydney, Australia. Years later, Pagon raced in a triathlon there.