Diane Runge laughs at the memory of her oldest daughter’s first swim meet, perhaps now knowing that it was a harbinger of things to come.

In 2001, a five-year-old Cierra Runge was competing in the 25-meter freestyle, a race that spans one lap of the pool, an appropriate distance for children who’ve just learned how to stay afloat.

“When all the little swimmers reached the wall, they stopped,” Diane said. “But Cierra turned around and kept on going.”

It’s a fitting anecdote, considering that, 15 years later, the 6-foot-3 Cochranville native may have finally stopped growing, but she certainly hasn’t stopped swimming.

And her journey in the pool will take a two-week stop later this summer in Rio de Janeiro.

By virtue of her fifth place finish in the 200-meter freestyle Wednesday night at the U.S. Olympic swimming trials in Omaha, Neb., 20-year-old Cierra punched her ticket to the Olympics by securing a spot on the United States’ 4×200-meter relay team.

“Oh my God … I didn’t know whether I should laugh or cry,” Cierra said. “To finally make it is unbelievable. I’ve never, ever wanted anything so badly.”

Today, she swims in the preliminaries of the 800-meter freestyle, swimming’s version of the marathon, and is expected to qualify for the event’s finals tomorrow. The top-two finishers in the 800 will swim in Rio.

Barring an unforeseen occurrence, Katie Ledecky, currently the most dominant female athlete on the planet, will take first. Second place, however, is truly up for grabs, and Runge is one of the contenders.

“Making the Olympic team,” she said, “has been a dream of mine since I was 4.”

Speaking of that age …

“I had taught elementary school for 10 years, then became a stay-at-home mom when my kids were born,” said Diane. “Cierra used to watch PBS on television during the day. In the summer of 2000, though, when she was four, I had the Olympics on.

“After about the third day of watching nothing but swimming – I mean, she was mesmerized, sitting so close to the screen – she turned to me and said, ‘Mommy, I’m going to do that one day.’ I said, first, you need to learn how to swim.”

After a lesson at the Jennersville YMCA, Cierra’s instructor advised Diane to put Cierra on a team, so she could swim competitively.

It quickly became clear that Cierra’s interest in the sport was more than just a hobby, as she was willing to make the difficult sacrifices as a teenager that are required to succeed on the highest level.

When she turned 15, Cierra began training – six days a week, sometimes five hours a day – at the renowned North Baltimore Aquatic Club, under the watchful eye of esteemed coach Bob Bowman. She often shared a lane with the greatest swimmer of all time, Michael Phelps.

The commute put an inordinate amount of miles on Diane’s car. With an odometer north of 270,000 miles, she could perhaps navigate that familiar stretch of I-95 with her eyes closed. (It’s not recommended.)

“As a parent, your kids become your priority,” Diane said about the lengths she and her husband Scott, a paramedic at the Longwood Fire Company, went to facilitate their children’s athletic achievements. “Your job is to figure out what their best is, and help bring it out of them.”

Cierra’s older brother, Taylor, was a baseball player at Bucknell. Her younger sister, Madison (Maddie), who also trains at the NABC and just graduated from the 21st Century Cyber Charter School, will swim at Navy.

If you’re wondering how Cierra’s education fit into her schedule, she is a graduate of Octorara, where she attended school in the morning and took online courses in the evening. She spent her freshman year of college at California-Berkeley, a swimming powerhouse, and set school records in the 500-meter, 1000-meter, and 1,650-meter freestyles.

Oh, and Cierra was a national champion on Cal’s 800-meter freestyle relay.

Cierra took the past year off from school as a redshirt to train in Tempe, Ariz. with Bowman, now the coach at Arizona State, and Phelps, whom Cierra first laid eyes on when he was swimming across the four-year-old’s television screen in the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

Cierra will transfer to Wisconsin for the upcoming school year, but the Badgers and all the Big Ten championships they plan to win can wait.

Now, Cierra will wear the Stars and Stripes in Brazil as a member of a relay team that includes the likes of Ledecky, Missy Franklin, and Allison Schmitt. They’re household names in the sport, young women whom the nation fell in love with four years ago, when they captured gold medals at the London Olympics.

Cierra Runge, long ago, captured the attention, if not the hearts of those in Western Chester County. Now, she has the chance to become the object of America’s affection.

With a shiny medal draped around her neck.