Hostetler Sisters Reunite on LU Cross-Country Team

Sisters Anna and Marie Hostetler have been training and racing with each other since middle school. Today, they’re teammates now racing as Liberty Flames.

The individual journeys that led the two distance runners to the Liberty track and cross-country teams could not be more different, however.

Anna, currently a junior, attended the University of Iowa for a year and a half, before transferring to Liberty in the spring of 2020. Her younger sister Marie was a high school senior at the time and committed to Liberty before her sister’s move. Interested by the culture of Liberty and the prospect of being teammates with her sister, Anna looked into the school and ultimately decided to transfer.

The decision to attend Liberty was an easy one for Marie. As a three-time Gatorade Cross Country Runner of the Year for the state of Iowa, she had a lot of Division I interest from other schools, but ultimately Liberty was the only school she applied to.

“I wanted both of those things – to be able to run on the Division I level and be able to go to a Christian college,” Marie said. “I came here and I loved it.”

For Anna, athletics as well as faith played a role in bringing her to Liberty.

“The biggest difference is just being at a Christian school and having the coaches and teammates working towards the common goal of glorifying God in everything we do,” Anna said.

Both sisters love to win – which can be hard for siblings competing in the same sport, much less the same races. Some might see it as a sibling rivalry, but this isn’t the case for the Hostetlers.

“I saw it as working together, like when we got first and second a lot my freshman year. She would get first and I would get second and I just thought of it as – we were both winning,” Marie said.

That mindset seemed to work well for the sisters who frequently swept the top two places at any meet they went to, including the 2016 Iowa State Championships where Anna placed first and Marie was second. A year later, Marie would win states and her sister would finish right behind her. Family has always been an important part of the sisters’ running careers. They initially got into the sport because of their father’s influence – he coached crosscountry at their local high school.

“Family is one of the most important things, and they are always going to be there throughout your life,” Anna said.

Woman’s Cross-Country Coach Rachel Johnson has enjoyed working with the sisters this fall.

“It’s just cool being able to see sisters working together, I thought at first maybe there’ll be some weird competitiveness between them or something like that, but I feel they do a great job of encouraging one another, no matter what,” Johnson said.

According to Anna, having a sister on the team only adds to the team’s already family-like atmosphere.

“It’s just fun being on a team where everyone is family and all these girls are really just sisters in Christ and we’re all unified,” Anna said.  

Mario Cosentino is a Sports Reporter. Follow him on Twitter at @Runner_of_steel.