When The Master’s College distance runner Anthony Pizzo stepped to the starting line on March 5 at the Ben Brown Invitational in Fullerton, there wasn’t fear. There wasn’t intimidation.

There certainly wasn’t the lanky kid who joined Canyon High’s cross country team to have fun with his friends.

There was something else entirely — a college sophomore who is already verging on elite status.

Pizzo was the top collegiate runner in the event that day, finishing above competitors from professional clubs, NCAA Division I programs and such athletes as UC Riverside’s Chad Hall, one of the nation’s top runners, and Golden Valley graduate Seth Totten.

The Canyon grad ran the 5,000-meter race in 14 minutes, 18 seconds and qualified for the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics National Championships in May.

It was only the team’s second overall meet of the season, and its first truly competitive one.

“He’s really just flourishing as an athlete,” says TMC head coach Zach Schroeder. “With each passing week, I think that his future just gets brighter.”

In the fall, Pizzo helped guide the Mustangs cross country team to its first-ever Golden State Athletic Conference championship and an 11th-place finish at the NAIA National Championships. He finished ninth overall and earned All-American honors in the process.

The signs of that success had been on the wall.

As a freshman at TMC, Pizzo didn’t waste any time making his presence felt after the team lost its team captain, Jeff Jackson, to a season-ending injury.

In his first college cross country race, he took off from the starting line and immediately challenged the top runner at the time — Azusa Pacific’s Abednego Magut. Pizzo finished 12th overall out of 213 runners.

“That’s just the type of guy that Pizzo is,” Schroeder says. “He’s a big performer. He really demands excellence of himself.”

Pizzo wouldn’t have it any other way. He knows how far he’s come, and he wants to continue stretching the bounds of his talent, he says. 

“I like to see how much I can push it,” Pizzo says. “I don’t want to not give myself a chance by starting the race slowly or not to the best of my ability. I want to race at the beginning the way I want to race the whole way through.”

However, his athletic career began much differently, says Dave DeLong, Pizzo’s cross country and track coach at Canyon.

“I think he would say that he was a late-bloomer athletically, but mostly competitively,” DeLong says. “When he came as a freshman, he didn’t really take it very seriously. … Each year that went by, he put a little more into it, became a little more serious. It wasn’t until his senior year, I would say especially track, that he took it really seriously, that he took it to the next level where he was willing to put in the extra time that it takes to be good.”

Pizzo’s efforts culminated in an individual Foothill League championship in the 3,200, All-CIF honors, and a coveted spot in the program’s top 10 fastest times in the 3,200. He ranks No. 9 at 9:16.21, DeLong says, a mark he posted at the CIF-Southern Section Division II finals in 2009.

And that was after Pizzo broke his back in a motorcycle accident as junior.

DeLong says he still speaks with Pizzo regularly and follows his progress. The mark at Ben Brown in the 5,000 came as no surprise given his growth over the last couple of years.

“He might rank somewhere around 20th in valley history,” says DeLong, who has coached at Canyon for 25 years, “yet he could end up being the fastest 5,000-meter runner in valley history when all is said and done.”

For Pizzo, the same accelerated growth that has propelled him to top of the NAIA ranks extends to other areas of his life as well.

On July 2, 2010, the 19-year-old married his former TMC teammate, Erika Amaradio.

It hasn’t served as a distraction. It has actually served Pizzo well.

“I definitely see that,” he says. “I would never have assumed when I was in high school or graduated high school that I would be married right now or even running as fast as I am right now. Whatever it may be, my coach’s mindset or the team or the school’s mindset, that has brought me to this place. It is accelerated. A normal 19- or 20-year-old isn’t normally married. I do feel that I’m a lot more mature than in high school. That helps me run the way I do.”

Schroeder says Pizzo has become a leader and role model in training, and is viewed as a cornerstone for the present and future of the program.

He’s streamlined other areas of his life and has matured in the process.

He even just looks different.

“It really is weird when you look at pictures of him as a freshman to now,” Schroeder says. “It’s like baby Pizzo to man Pizzo. By his senior year, he’s going to turn into Samson or something.”

But through all of his success, Pizzo has remained grounded.

He credits Schroeder for the training regimen and philosophy that has taken his running to new heights.

He credits his teammates, like Jackson and fellow sophomore John Gilbertson, for providing an example to follow and pushing him on a daily basis.

He doesn’t need to be pushed anymore.

Now the focus is on moving the program forward.

“If you were to come out like I did and run a personal best in your first race, that is really shocking, and that just brings, I think, a responsibility for you to continue in that and run even better,” Pizzo says. “You have to look ahead to do even better than that.”

He plans to.

And he’s not the only one who will benefit. 

“One of the greatest joys as a coach, especially a coach of runners or swimmers or those kids of sports, is when an athlete goes far beyond your expectations both while you have them and when they go on to college,” DeLong says. “That whole journey that I got to experience with (Pizzo) was just indescribable, and I think he would say the same thing.

“Every time, if he decided to raise his level of commitment, he got faster,” he adds. “Some kids get that earlier than he got it, but that’s OK. What matters is that he got it, that now he’s reaching his full potential. I think it made the journey a little more fun.”