Aiva Pinches

Happy birthday to Australia’s Aiva Pinches, a Newcastle middle-distance runner who packed an unreasonable amount into a single freshman year.

In her first season at the University at Albany, Aiva won four America East conference titles. Gold in the 4x800m and the distance medley relay at the indoor championships in Boston in February, then 4x800m gold again outdoors at Lowell in May, where the Great Danes women collected their seventeenth consecutive outdoor conference crown. Individually she was fourth in the 800m at both championships, running 2:13.82 indoors and 2:12.64 outdoors, with a lifetime best of 2:12.24.

Eight days after that outdoor relay gold in Massachusetts, she was in Darwin wearing the green and gold for Australia in the 1500m at the Oceania Championships.

The relay record is the part worth pausing on. Conference championship relays are where a coach puts the runners she trusts, and Aiva was on both winning squads indoors and the winning squad outdoors, in a program with a seventeen-year title streak to protect. Freshmen do not get handed those legs. They earn them in practice, in front of everyone, months before the championship. She came into all of it from Lambton High School in Newcastle, is coached at home by Tom Kitching, and has been racing club cross country back in the Hunter this July.

Happy birthday, Aiva!, four conference titles and an Australian vest already banked. Good on ya, and here is to a big sophomore year. 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇦🇺