Why not Wilmot

There was a time when Whitefish burner Rachael Wilmot was a cross country runner, and her dad remembers it well.

“Fifth or sixth grade,” Kevin Wilmot said. “I think it was a mile and a half. They go down this straight stretch for maybe a quarter-mile, and she was in a full-out sprint. I remember telling her to slow down.” 

It should have been official then: She’s a sprinter. 

Heading into Thursday’s Last Chance Meet in Whitefish — and the Polson A-B-C Meet on Saturday — Wilmot is one of the swiftest girls in Class A. She’s 4-0 in the 400 meters this spring and has won more than half the 100 meters races she’s entered.  

Just as notable is what it took to beat her: Flathead’s Alivia Rinehart ran a PR while beating Wilmot in the 200 at the Missoula Top 10, and got her by a tenth at the Kalispell Time Trails on April 8; Missoula Hellgate senior Sofia Szollosi has got her twice in the 100, by a total of 15 hundredths of a second.  

In the first spring since 2020 in which Whitefish hasn’t had Brooke Zetooney scorching the track, Wilmot has come into her own. 

“We talk about her having kind of been in Brooke’s shadow, but I think she was a great teammate for Brooke,” Whitefish girls track coach Matt Beckwith said this week. “And Brooke was a good teammate for Rachael, and now she’s kind of making her own way.  

“She just continues to exceed expectations. We can count on knowing what she’s going to do. I think that’s pretty amazing.” 

Wilmot, for the record, liked being teammates with Zetooney and Hailey Ells, who helped the Bulldogs take first, second and second at the last three State A meets. 

“I was pretty excited in middle school about going into high school, mostly because of Brooke,” she said. “That was someone to push me to be better. Even if I never beat her, it was still nice. And Hailey too.” 

They say steel sharpens steel, and Wilmot’s times brought plenty of colleges calling. Northern Arizona, Nevada and Idaho for starters; Wyoming, Colorado Mines, Colorado State and Montana State. 

“Some of them offered me spots,” she said. “MSU did not, and CSU did not.” 

Wilmot added: “I was just having a hard time figuring it out.” 

Then came the call from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. With an interest in the sciences, the location and curriculum fit. 

“She wanted to go somewhere with mountains and ocean, and she wanted to go somewhere to major in some sort of science,” Kevin Wilmot said. “And track was really third on the list, which is to her credit. Hawaii just checked all those boxes for her.” 

“She gets to run at about five feet above sea level, which will be good,” Beckwith said. “She toured schools all over the place and man, she lit up when she told us she was going to go to Hawaii.” 

That decision made, it’s no time to coast. There are still plenty of athletes to push Wilmot at the Class A level, including senior Kaydance Reiter and junior Macy Brandon of Havre.  

Reiter owns the top 100 and 200 times in A and is the defending State A 100 meters champion (Wilmot was second, by .07). Havre is scheduled to compete in Polson Saturday. 

Then it’s time for divisionals, and then the State A meet, running concurrently with the State AA at Legends Stadium May 23-24. That’s about 15 minutes from Whitefish, which suits Wilmot just fine. 

“Super nice,” she said. “The last two years it was in Laurel. An eight-hour drive. It was awful. It’s so nice having it close.” 

Wilmot still PR’d in all three sprints in Laurel last May, by the way. She finished second, third and third in the 100, 200 and 400. A year later, competitors will still have to deal with a Bulldog’s determination.