Canyon View's Annaleise Taylor emerges as one of Arizona's top hurdlers

Just a few years ago, Waddell Canyon View senior Annaleise Taylor was focused on cheerleading.

Despite having started track and field at the age of four, she drifted away from the sport heading into middle school. For Taylor, who comes from an athletic family with three older brothers who played football and ran track and field, cheer and gymnastics became the focus.

Once she entered high school at Goodyear Millennium though, Taylor decided to return to the track. After opting to focus on the hurdles, she transferred to Canyon View.

There, she came under the guidance of coach Muhammad Oliver. It wasn’t Oliver’s first time with a Taylor – he had already coached two of her brothers. Oliver, a two-way athlete who competed in the decathlon at Oregon and played cornerback in the NFL in the 1990s, has an eye for talent. His son, Isaiah, put together a storied prep football and track and field career at Phoenix Brophy Prep and played for the San Francisco 49ers in the 2023-2024 season.

Oliver wanted Taylor to put her energy into track. He knew something was there.

Now, she’s one of the fastest hurdlers in the United States.

“I’m glad she started to take it serious, at least this point in high school, because she’s always been really talented in it,” said Oliver.

Taylor is ranked second in the country for the 300-meter hurdles with her time of 41.28 seconds. That would have been the state record up until last season when Gilbert Williams Field’s Saira Prince ran 40.90.

Nonetheless, Taylor has cemented herself in state history as one of the best. And she only started hurdling seriously towards the end of her sophomore year.

She takes after her mom, Amy, who played volleyball and basketball and ran track at Glendale Independence High School, and her dad, Nolan, who played football and basketball in New York.

Taylor began working out at EliteU Training in Scottsdale off-the-track and got connected with Jarret Eaton, a local track and field coach, after the 2023 season.

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Eaton was an NCAA champion in the 60-meter hurdles at Syracuse and won two national titles in 2016 and 2018. At the global level, he was a silver and bronze medalist at the World Indoor Championships in 2018 and 2022. He now coaches for Phoenix Xavier Prep and Brophy Prep at the high school level and at Phoenix Youth Track Club, alongside Tim O’Neil.

“It made a good foundation for the season,” Taylor said. “He’s (Eaton) great. He knows a lot. He’s helped me learn a lot. At the end of practice, he’ll break everything down, record it. He goes down to literal milliseconds to see what I can change and tweak.”

Those iPad videos became key for Taylor. When shaving off tenths of a second is the goal, every little detail matters.

“I think learning how she can hurdle with the speed she has,” Eaton said, when asked about what’s changed in the offseason. “Helping her with new drills, new techniques and a better fundamental understanding of the hurdles. Sometimes as athletes, we get told by our coaches what to do. We try to explain why a movement is important for them to better understand it.”

The symbiotic relationship between the club and high school has been a factor in her success as well. After her club season, Taylor switched to focus on her high school competition with Canyon View. It was a seamless transition.

Along with Oliver, Taylor is coached in the hurdles by Daryl Wonsey – who was the former NAU school record holder in the indoor 60-meter hurdles.

“She’s gone above and beyond this offseason to get as strong as she can and fine tune her hurdling technique as much as possible,” Oliver said. “Jarret did a great job with her in the offseason. When she came to us, she was in really good shape, fast, strong. And then we took over from there, he passed the baton to us.”

With Wonsey, Oliver and Eaton all playing a role, Taylor’s climb up the record books has been sped up. It’s a perfect storm for a hurdler.

“She’s progressively getting better,” Eaton said. “We’re just seeing the best of Annaleise.”

All of it is starting to pay off as Taylor is one of the top recruits for her event. She’s been visiting colleges across the country this spring and has narrowed down her list to three schools: Kentucky, Oregon and ASU.

If she goes to Kentucky, she will join Avondale Agua Fria senior Stacey Onyepunuka and Chandler Hamilton senior Kori Martin – Hamilton set the 100-meter hurdle state record earlier this season .

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With so much competition in the hurdles, Taylor feeds off it.

“Kori really does push me a lot because knowing that she has that fast time that if I stay close to her, I can PR (set a personal record),” Taylor said. “We’re actually good friends too. We are competitors, but after the race is over, we are friends. She does push me. She’s really good.”

It’s part of an overall statewide trend in the hurdles after Prince’s record-breaking 2023 season and now with Gilbert’s Vance Nilsson running unprecedented times this year . Taylor hopes to do the same. She wants to break Prince’s last remaining record and go even faster.

With the way Taylor has quickly shaved off time, Oliver has all the faith.

“She’s so new to the sport,” Oliver said. “I think that’s what a lot of the colleges are really excited about that are looking at recruiting her. Usually, you can look at four, five years of track record of a high school athlete. With Annaleise, you’re only looking at two years of data. With two years of data, how do you really know? You can’t put a ceiling, and that’s what’s exciting though. Because if she can do this in the first full two years of competing, what can she do in the next two years? She hasn’t hit her stride. To put a ceiling on her would be unfair to Annaleise and I will not be the one to do that.”

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Canyon View's Annaleise Taylor emerges as one of Arizona's top hurdlers