The athletes who hold themselves to a higher standard than anyone else can place upon them are a rare breed.

Edgewood cross country coach Steve Hill knows he is blessed to have crossed paths with such a runner in Mallory Kreider. No matter how high the expectations are upon her, the Warrior senior has even greater objectives in mind for herself than anyone else does.

“Mallory has definitely always had high expectations,” Hill said. “They are so high for herself that the expectations of others don’t seem to affect her much.”

“I have my own expectations,” the daughter of Alan and Kim Kreider of North Kingsville said. “I do have high expectations for myself.”

She will be carrying those expectations into Saturday’s Division II race at the state championships at Scioto Downs Race Track in Columbus at 11:50 a.m. She set herself up for that with her 25th-place finish, good enough for second-team All-Ohio honors, last November. The projections for Kreider were really heightened this past June when she won the Division II state track championship in the 3200-meter run.

Expectations can be a tricky thing, though. Sometimes they can force an athlete to do things beyond their capabilities or can apply too much pressure.

That appears to have happened last Saturday at the regional meet at Boardman High School. Considered one of the favorites to win the Division II race, Kreider ran the vast majority of the race behind Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy’s Christina Blair and eventually dropped back to ninth. That was still easily good enough to qualify for her third trip to the state meet, but it was an eye-opening experience, one she would rather not repeat.

Kreider hopes to profit from that scary experience.

“I feel like I learned a lot from the race,” she said. “I think I’m going to be more mentally prepared this week.

“I guess I expected to be more in charge of the pace and I started to panic. I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, what’s going on.’ Not being in control of the pace was scary. Last week was a wakeup call. I can’t panic.”

“I think Mallory got caught up last week in the thought that she was being beaten by a girl she had already beaten twice before this season,” Hill said. “We want to let Mallory dictate her race.”

Hill noted that even though Kreider has had a lot of exposure to the big stage, it doesn’t mean she’s beyond learning new things.

“Mallory’s still a young runner,” he said. “She’s still experiencing new things. Chalk up last week to a life experience. She had hoped to win, but she just didn’t run well. She was upset.”

So a somewhat different strategy will be employed this week.

“We’re working toward putting Mallory in the best position possible to do well,” Hill said. “We’re not going in with the expectations of her winning. We want her to run her best race and let the chips fall where they may.”

“I have to run my own race,” Kreider said. “I’m trying to focus on that. I need to be calm and relax. I just want to run my best and whatever happens, happens.”

Throughout the season, Kreider and Hill have tried a number of different strategies in various races to apply to that particular situation. Saturday’s race will be somewhat a mixture of all those strategies.

They figure to follow a somewhat different race strategy for this final race, though. Track races for distance runners provide numerous chances to get feedback on how they are running according to plan as they are running over the same terrain and hear their times after each lap, in the case of the 3200-meter run, seven times.

Cross country provides a different challenge since it is contested over a constantly varying terrain. Generally the only information they receive on how close they are to running the pace they desire occurs at the one- and two-mile marks.

Hill said he and Kreider have tried to work out a strategy to give her an idea of her pace every half mile.

“We’re going to try and break the race up into half-mile segments this week,” he said. “Then the last mile, we’ll let her see who she’s running with and go from there. She should have a pretty good understanding of where she is after the first two miles and can go for it after that.”

Kreider acknowledges that she is an analytical type of runner.

“I’m a numbers person,” she said. “Track gives me more chances to run according to the numbers. I just have to concentrate on running my own race this week.”

Both coach and athlete are aware this is the last race of Kreider’s high school career, at least in Ohio. There’s every reason to give it her best shot.

“I think Mallory will be better prepared this week,” Hill said. “Pressure is no big deal. She just has to let it all go this week.”

“I just want to leave on Saturday knowing that I gave it the best I had,” Kreider said. “I know I have one last shot.

“I want to make it my best shot.”