Freshman runner Tyler Blissett has already accomplished more in his high school career than many athletes ever dream of.

As a middle schooler, Blissett was consistently ranked at the top of the nation in his age group in both cross country and track, and the excellence hasn’t tapered off as he has made the jump to the prep ranks.

Earlier this year, Blissett secured a first-place finish in the Division V Cross Country State Meet with a time of 16:29.3.

Last weekend, he added two more podium finishes to his resume, placing 3rd in the 1600-meters and 1st in the 3200-meters at the Division II Indoor Track and Field State Meet.

Blissett, who is always more focused on results than on words, delivered a direct response when asked whether or not he expected to perform so well.

“I was. We’ve been training hard all year and we knew what we were capable of. We went out there and did it.”

While his performance and confidence makes it seem like placing first was a matter of certainty, Blissett has been putting in the hard work all year long to reach the podium in his freshman season.

Training six days a week, Blissett varies his distances to make sure he’s always testing himself to the limit.

“We normally do two hard workouts a week and the rest are easier,” he explained. We have one day off and once a week we do a longer run, usually 7-12 miles.”

Making the change from cross country to track and field hasn’t seemed to bother Blissett, despite the race conditions being as different as they can be.

When he won his cross country meet earlier this year, it was on a rainy, windy day that saw the course become muddied almost immediately. For the indoor meet, he was battling against warm recycled air in LSU’s Carl Maddox Fieldhouse that made breath control difficult.

“The track itself isn’t hard,” he said of the NCAA-regulation indoor track. “The actual stadium is difficult because they keep the heater on, so it’s harder to breathe. It’s easier to keep track of your times since every lap is 200 meters instead of 400 meters.”

His first event of the state meet was the 1600-meter race, where despite having a solid game plan, things went a little off the rails in the first lap.

Taking up his position at the rear of the group, Blissett planned to see what the other runners were going to do and react from there. Unfortunately, nobody took control of the race and Blissett was left scrambling with a much slower start than he expected.

“The first lap was very slow, our pace was 3 or 4 seconds off of what we expected, so I kind of made too much of an adjustment too soon,’ Blissett explained. “I should have gradually made the adjustment instead of doing it so quickly. I was trapped so I couldn’t get around.”

Toby Blissett, Tyler’s father and track coach, said that the 1600-meter race was just a case of not adjusting to the race appropriately.

“We went in with a game plan but as Mike Tyson said, ‘everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face.’”

“We got punched in the face in that first lap and we didn’t know how to respond. The race started way slower than we thought it would and Tyler tried to make it up all at once and I think that just threw him off his game plan. He still ran a personal-best time and a good race, but Aiden Monistere and Jackson Burney ran smarter races. We expected somebody to go out fast in that race and set the tone and nobody did. We weren’t prepared for that.”

Even with the plan going out the window early, Blissett still managed to pick up a 3rd place finish in the 1600-meters with a time of 4:30.99.

Next on the docket was Blissett’s best event, the 3200-meter race.

Once again, Blissett settled into the pack and waited to see how the opposition would perform before making his move and gathering a big lead that would last until he crossed the finish line in first place.

“One guy started out fast but I knew he wasn’t going to be able to keep that pace up the whole time,’ Blissett explained. “Around the mile mark I took the lead and I felt confident. I knew I was going to get the win.”

With a time of 9:50.0, Blissett improved on his personal record (PR) dramatically, but Toby Blissett said all that matters at the state meets are the silverware.

“In the state meet you aren’t worried about setting times and records so much, you go to the state meet to win races,” he said. “I still think he’s in 9:38 to 9:40 shape, and if he would’ve needed to run that he could’ve but he didn’t need to. He took control of that race early and ran his race and the result was what we were looking for: a win.”

With gold medals in two sports already on his resume, Blissett is quickly turning his attention to the outdoor season.

“We look at indoor track and outdoor track as kind of the same season, training wise,” he explained. “Our training is in four phases and we’re going from phase two to phase three, so it’ll be more focused on thresholds and tempos instead of fast repetitions. That means longer workouts but a little bit slower pace.”

His father explained that the change in training schedule was designed to make sure Tyler is hitting his peak when it matters most.

“This year I committed to a 24-week season, so I’m treating indoor and outdoor as one season,” the elder Blissett said. “Last year we ramped him up for the indoor state meet and the indoor national meet then had to back off and regroup and it hurt him a little bit.

“We had a hard time coming back from those fast times and trying to time two peaks in the same season didn’t work that well. We’re not changing our training at all, we didn’t try to peak for the indoor meet, we just trusted our program and the process and it worked out for us. If we keep progressing he should be in really good shape come May 6, that’s what we have circled on our calendar.”

One of the ways that the Blissetts plan to make improvements is by having Tyler compete in a shorter distance event, the 800-meters.

“As strong as he is as a distance runner, his weakness is his foot speed and his turn-over,” explained Toby. “The shorter the race is, the tougher they become for him. Last year we made a commitment to improving foot speed and improving in those shorter distance races, so we’re going to use the early outdoor season to keep improving on that.”

Before the duo can completely focus on the outdoor season, they have one final indoor event on the schedule.

“We just decided yesterday that he’s going to compete at the New Balance Indoor Nationals in Boston, which is on March 11,” coach Blissett announced. “He’s going to run in the freshman mile event.”

With both Blissetts focused on ending Tyler’s freshman season with first-place finishes in three sports, some might think that the duo is only concerned with medals and results.

According to Toby, the real goal is improvement.

“We’ve said all along that we run and compete to improve, so as long as we’re improving, we’re happy. The results are going to come as long as we’re working hard every day and we’re improving week-by-week or season-by-season. That’s the goal that we want to achieve. Improvement is success.”