When Kamila Trachsel was in fourth grade, she entered Tri-Valley Middle School's yearbook cover contest with a drawing of a Viking sailing toward the school. She came in second.

For some kids, that might have been the end of it. Kamila looked at the winning artwork, admired it, and decided she wanted to get better. So she practiced.

The following year, she entered again. This time, her Viking was painting "Go Vikings" in the bubble lettering she loves to draw. She won.

"I was just so proud of myself," Kamila said. "After I lost in fourth grade, I'm one of those people where if I am just so short of winning, I'm like, all right, so I'm gonna practice."

Practice, it turns out, explains quite a lot about Kamila. Now a seventh grader, she loves art because of the freedom it gives her.

"You basically can't really get it wrong," she said. "You're able to do whatever you want to do. And then at the end of it, if it looks good, you can say, 'I made that.'"

In sixth grade, Kamila entered the yearbook competition again. Her design featured a Viking holding a camera, with a filmstrip winding around the cover and images representing different parts of Tri-Valley. She won again. This time, she got the moment she'd missed the previous year when there had been no assembly. Kamila stood in front of her classmates and heard her name announced.

"It was just really special," she said. "I was so proud of myself."

Whether she will enter again this year remains undecided. Her reason for hesitating says something about her.

"I don't want people to not do it because of me."

Kamila wants other students to discover what she has learned: that ability isn't necessarily fixed at the moment you first try something.

"If you practice, even just two, three months, you can get so much better than you were," she said. "There's proof of this."

You can find more of it on a cross-country course. Kamila began running cross country in sixth grade and quickly discovered she was good at it. Very good.

She has already run two miles unofficially in 12 minutes, three seconds, with an official personal best of 12:04. During her first season of track, she became the fastest 800- and 1,600-meter runner on Tri-Valley's middle school team.

When injuries sidelined older runners, coaches Savage and Flessner saw an opportunity. They worked to get permission for a sixth grader to compete at the eighth-grade state meet. Kamila didn't merely qualify. She finished third.

This year, she is thinking bigger still. After the school cross country season, Kamila hopes to pursue the qualifying path toward the USATF Junior Olympic cross country finals.

"I really hope I can," she said.

Hope, however, isn't her entire strategy. During the offseason, Kamila trained four to six days a week. She runs two to four miles, works out with her dad at the YMCA, and practices basketball afterward. Her mom walks and runs with her and takes her to the park to shoot baskets.

Kamila is an only child whose parents live separately, but she describes them as an unwavering team when it comes to supporting her.

"They've never missed a cross country meet," she said. "They always come to track meets. They always come to basketball games."

They've also taught her that an occasional poor performance isn't a crisis.

"If you don't do well, that's no problem," Kamila said of their advice. "But just make sure if you want to get better, you have to practice."

Friends and coaches add another circle of encouragement. At a recent race, Kamila was leading the girls' field when she heard people from another team recognize her.

"Oh, it's that girl from Tri."

She loved it.

"It makes me feel like all that hard work that I put in is paying off," she said.

For all her competitive drive, Kamila hasn't narrowed herself into a single identity. She is a runner who loves basketball. She is an athlete who loves markers, lettering and design. She imagines someday using running to help her get to college, while perhaps studying art, graphic design, or another creative field.

"I don't want to get a job where it's just, 'Oh, for the money.' I want to do something that I personally love."

Kamila has plenty of time to decide what that will be. For now, she keeps drawing. She keeps running. And when something doesn't turn out quite the way she hoped, she already knows what comes next.

Practice.