They grew up racing together in Colorado, learning and training together through middle and high school in Texas, and choosing - unanimously - to keep going together at BYU. Robin Latta didn't set out to build a program. She set out to raise daughters. Here is what transpired.
Robin Latta grew up in an athletic family in Kansas. Her brother was an exceptional runner and sprinter who has now coached at the collegiate level for more than 25 years. Running was always part of her life, but Robin was a volleyball player who had never run cross country before college. In her senior year of high school, a freak volleyball accident tore her ACL.
She entered college still recovering from that serious injury while also learning an entirely new sport. Coming back from an ACL injury while taking on cross country for the first time was challenging, to say the least. That experience - the injury, the patience, the long road back - gave her a perspective on training and athlete development that didn't fully make sense to her until much later, when she had five daughters who ran and a responsibility to know why everything she asked of them was worth asking.
She never set out to be a coach. She set out to raise five good people. The running came later. And then it didn't stop coming.
The five Latta girls - Addy, Iris, Elin, Remy, and Reese, all close in age, impossibly close as sisters - found youth cross country in Colorado when they were little. It fit the family. Five girls who could train together, race together, travel together, and be outside together.
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"Running shoes," Robin notes, "were a lot cheaper than horses." They had tried horses. They had tried dance, tennis, hiking, all of it. Youth cross country stuck.
The results came because the foundation was right, because Robin was more interested in where her daughters would be in ten years than in what they ran at age fifteen. As they became more serious about running, she became increasingly interested in understanding how young athletes develop and how to help them improve without sacrificing their long-term health for short-term results.
"I've always looked at this as a long game," she says. "I don't believe in taking a talented young runner and finding out how much training she can survive."
Now Elin and Iris - fraternal twins, Class of 2028 - run in the national high school conversation. Remy and Reese - adopted twins, also Class of 2028 - have grown into athletes with real ambitions and real futures. Addy, the oldest, has taken a different path, one shaped by a congenital hip condition and summer coursework through Johns Hopkins and the University of Rochester in biomedical engineering and orthopedics. And all four younger sisters are headed to BYU together, to run for Coach Diljeet Taylor, in what Robin describes as the natural next chapter - not a surprise, not a compromise, but the place where staying together felt exactly right.
The Latta girls are quick to tell you that running is not the whole story. All five are drawn toward engineering, medicine, and healthcare - fields that require the same discipline and curiosity they bring to training. Between them they carry heavy AP course loads, strong academic records, and ambitions that extend well beyond any finish line. Running is part of who they are. It just isn't all of it.
Robin: The Long Game
Robin is a chiropractor with a background in human biology. She thinks in terms of physiology, biomechanics, and adaptation. When she started coaching her daughters, she didn't want to copy workouts because other successful runners were doing them. She wanted to understand why. What adaptation were they looking for? Was it right for that girl, that day?
That last part is where being their mom has made her a better coach. . She knows them in ways that take years to accumulate - their rhythms, their tells, the difference between normal fatigue and something that needs attention.
"Even when all five are doing a similar workout," she says, "it isn't really the same workout for everyone. The pace, volume, recovery or expectations may be different depending on the girl, where she is in her development, how she's feeling that day and what we're trying to accomplish with her specifically."
She is equally deliberate about what she won't do. She is firm on the idea - increasingly common in young women's distance running - that lighter automatically means faster. Performance might improve for a year or two, which can make the theory seem true. But she is thinking about the next five years, not the next season.
"These girls are still growing into women," she says. "We don't fight against their bodies changing into women's bodies. We embrace it. Strength is powerful, and strong women are powerful."
She is honest about the harder part of the job, knowing when to stop being Coach and just be Mom. She suspects she is better at making that distinction some days than others. She suspects the girls would have something to say about that. But what she is most certain of has nothing to do with running. "If running ended tomorrow," she says, "they have entire lives ahead of them filled with possibilities. I'm proud of what they've accomplished as runners, but I'm far more proud of who they are."
Elin: The Racer
Elin Latta's earliest running memory is a 5K when she was very small. Her mom told her she could walk if she got tired. She didn't want to. She remembers getting tired and taking tiny, ridiculous steps, but walking was not something her mind would allow. She ran the whole thing. Nobody made her. In fact, someone was telling her she didn't have to.
That instinct has never left. It just looks different now.
By eighth grade she held the national indoor mile record for her grade. She didn't know there was a record until she heard it mentioned during the race. She wasn't chasing it - she was just racing. Records, she is quick to say, are not what drives her. "I love racing. I like lining up against really good runners and finding out what I can do. I love that you can think you know where your limit is, and then you get into a race and somehow find something else."
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That quality showed itself most clearly after it was almost taken away. At NXN, Elin sprained her ankle and broke a bone. She spent months biking and swimming, pouring her competitive energy into what she could do instead of mourning what she couldn't. What she discovered surprised her. She genuinely loved it. Biking and swimming stopped being substitutes and became things she actually enjoyed, things she now believes have made her a better overall athlete.
Nobody rushed her back. She returned when she was healthy and felt ready, near the end of track season. She felt great, raced, and felt like herself again.
Now she holds the Texas girls mile record, runs in the national 5K conversation this fall, and carries a full AP course load alongside her training. She is building toward what she describes as the part that excites her most. "I don't feel like I've figured out how good I can be yet," she says. "I'm really excited to find out."
Iris: The Grinder
Iris Latta knows exactly when she fell in love with running. It was USATF Youth Cross Country Nationals in Reno, and it was freezing. She was eight years old and working for every place down the finishing straight, trying to break into the top 25 and earn All-American. She didn't know if she had enough. She found out she did - 19th, standing on the awards stage, more proud than she had ever been of anything.
"I think that feeling of trying really hard and seeing the progress and success that can come from immense effort really stuck with me," she says. "I'm a grinder. I like working at something, figuring out what I can improve, and then doing the work."
She grew quickly in middle school and had to learn how to take care of a body that was changing faster than she could manage. That education became a genuine interest. She loves strength training, prehab, rehab, and plyometrics, but not because she has to do them, because she wants to understand why they work. Her mom's background in chiropractic gave her a vocabulary for the body early on, and she has built on it ever since.
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The same mind that keeps her training organized shows up everywhere else. Iris makes miniature dollhouses, sews clothes for dolls, and builds things from an idea all the way to something real. Academically, she is drawn toward science and engineering, another thread connecting training, curiosity, and the question of how things work. In the group of five, she tends to be the organizer: the one making a new rehab routine before anyone has asked, the one making sure everyone has what they need. She is excited about BYU because there is someone there who can teach her things she hasn't learned yet. For Iris, that is not an intimidating thought. It's the whole point.
Remy: The Competitor
Remy Latta's first memory of really loving running is a race in Colorado when she was little. Everyone was yelling. She could see the finish. She was running as hard as she possibly could. She does not remember one specific moment of deciding she wanted to be a runner. She just remembers loving to race, be it the person in front of her, the person behind her, and the finish line she was running toward with everything she had. "I think that's still one of my favorite things about racing," she says.
Growing up in Colorado, she heard ultrarunners talk about the pain cave - a funny way to describe something she later came to understand. When a race gets really uncomfortable, Remy doesn't back off. She has learned to stay focused in that place, and she has gotten better at it with age.
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What she is also learning is that toughness has a second definition. "Being tough doesn't always mean pushing harder. Sometimes being tough means being patient and giving yourself time to grow and get stronger." That, she says, is the harder thing for her. She wants to see progress now. She is learning to wait for it.What she is also learning is that toughness has a second definition. "Being tough doesn't always mean pushing harder. Sometimes being tough means being patient and giving yourself time to grow and get stronger." That, she says, is the harder thing for her. She wants to see progress now. She is learning to wait for it.
Reese: The Storyteller
Reese Latta got into running because her sisters did. But the moment it became hers was specific. A regional cross country meet, only the top 15 qualifying for nationals. She got 15th - the very last spot - and was so excited it barely mattered that she hadn't won anything. She had made it. "I think that was one of the first times running felt like something that was mine," she says. "After that, I just wanted to keep doing it."
She is also, among the five sisters, clearly a writer. She loves poetry, drawing, stories, and the work of getting an idea from her head onto paper. Her sisters love math. She does not. "They're the weirdos," she says, then adds: "I'm kidding. Sort of. They can have the math. I'll take the stories, poetry, drawing, and music."
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She has a way of thinking about running that sounds like someone who writes. "You can train for months for a race that lasts less than twenty minutes and then spend WAY longer than twenty minutes talking about everything that happened in it, from the start of the race to dying on the ground after you finish."
Sometimes running makes her brain quiet. Usually something is going on in her head - a story forming, an idea arriving. Running can stop all of that. Or it can do the opposite, and she'll spend an entire training session building an elaborate scenario in her mind. Racing is completely different. Racing is not quiet. "You're figuring out where everyone is, how you feel, when to move, when to push, whether you can go faster, and how much farther you have to go."
Addy: The Unexpected Road
Addy Latta was, by her own account, not strong at running when she started. She ran because her sisters ran, because that was what her family did. Somewhere in the middle of that, something shifted. She started wanting to get better at something that didn't come easily. That, she says, is when it became hers.
For a long time, the family knew something wasn't quite right with the way she moved, but didn't fully understand why. Eventually, they discovered the answer: a congenital hip condition. Finding out was, paradoxically, a relief. Her biomechanics made sense now. And it helped clarify something important - simply adding more miles was never going to turn her into her sisters.
"Unfortunately," she says, "my hips did not respond to motivational speeches."
She cannot run the volume her sisters run, so she cross-trains instead. Biking, lifting, strength work, and careful mechanical adjustments have become her version of training. She has come to genuinely like it - not as a substitute for what she can't do, but as something that is hers.
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What the hip condition also did, unexpectedly, was open a door. It made her interested in biomechanics - in why bodies move the way they move. That interest connected with things she already loved: math, physics, drawing, and working with her hands. She took summer classes through Johns Hopkins and the University of Rochester in biomedical engineering and orthopedics. She also found the Perry Initiative - a program that introduces young women to careers in orthopaedic surgery and engineering - and when she had the opportunity to shadow an orthopaedic surgeon, she loved everything about the experience.
The medicine, the mechanics, the way the two things connected. Those experiences helped a lot of seemingly unrelated parts of her life start to fit together. Running led her to biomechanics. Biomechanics led her toward engineering. Engineering and her exposure to medicine made her increasingly interested in orthopaedics, where all of those threads come together.
She plans to run, bike, swim, and hike. Maybe join a running club. Maybe try longer distances or run in the mountains. Maybe find a way to help the team in some capacity.
"For most of my life, I've been surrounded by sisters who are exceptionally talented runners," she says. "Running helped me realize that I don't have to be exactly like them to belong in the sport."
The sport she was not naturally good at helped her figure out what she is good at. The uncooperative hips turned out to be the beginning of a direction, not a dead end.
BYU: The Place That Felt Like the Next Chapter
The four younger sisters did not choose BYU separately and arrived at the same answer by coincidence. They wanted to go to college together. They had always wanted to. They are each other's closest friends, and because they are so close in age, the future had always been something they hoped to keep sharing. The question was never whether. The question was where.
They were selective. They did not send letters to dozens of programs. They reached out to a handful of coaches they were genuinely interested in, and one of those letters went to Diljeet Taylor at BYU.
When they visited and drove into Provo, the first thing Robin noticed was how much it reminded her of Colorado - the mountains, the outdoor environment, the sense of space. Colorado is home to them in ways that are hard to explain and easy to feel. Provo had that same quality. It felt familiar before they had spent a single day there.
Then they met the coach.
That, Robin says, was the most important part. She has coached her daughters for most of their running lives, and she has always known there would come a point when they needed someone who could take them beyond what she could offer. Diljeet Taylor was that person. "Meeting her made me feel incredibly comfortable with the idea of eventually handing over the reins," Robin says. For a mom who has been their coach since they were little, that comfort was not a small thing.
The culture fit too. The values they experienced at BYU felt consistent with what they valued at home. The women on the team were serious about their education, serious about each other, and serious about running - the kind of young women who wanted to be good students, good friends, and good people while sharing a genuine love of the sport. The Latta sisters recognized that combination immediately, because it described them.
After the visit, they talked it all through. And they knew.
"Staying together didn't feel like a compromise," Robin says. "It felt like the right next chapter."
What Running Made
Robin Latta didn't create five runners. She raised five people who happened to love the same thing she loved, and she took that love seriously enough to become the kind of coach it required.
Elin is still finding out how good she can be. Iris is still making sense of how all the pieces fit together. Remy is learning to be patient. Reese is still figuring out what stories she wants to tell. Addy is heading toward medicine and engineering.
Five daughters. Five different answers to the same question. One mom who never wanted the running to be the whole story.
"Running is something they do," Robin says. "It isn't all of who they are."She is proud of what they have accomplished. She is more proud of who they are. And she is most excited, she says, to see who each of them chooses to become.
The racing is still ahead of them. So is everything else.
They grew up racing together in Colorado, learning and training together through middle and high school in Texas, and choosing - unanimously - to keep going together at BYU. Robin Latta didn't set out to build a program. She set out to raise daughters. Here is what transpired.
Robin Latta grew up in an athletic family in Kansas. Her brother was an exceptional runner and sprinter who has now coached at the collegiate level for more than 25 years. Running was always part of her life, but Robin was a volleyball player who had never run cross country before college. In her senior year of high school, a freak volleyball accident tore her ACL.
She entered college still recovering from that serious injury while also learning an entirely new sport. Coming back from an ACL injury while taking on cross country for the first time was challenging, to say the least. That experience - the injury, the patience, the long road back - gave her a perspective on training and athlete development that didn't fully make sense to her until much later, when she had five daughters who ran and a responsibility to know why everything she asked of them was worth asking.