Whitman sophomore track star Gianna Paul has a blast competing in Iceland

Gianna Paul read the email and immediately had one thought — great, more spam.

That’s what it looked like, anyway. She was being invited on an all-expenses-paid trip to Iceland to compete in the Reykjavik International Games on Feb. 2 with the National Scholastic Athletics Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that raises funds to support national and international track and field and cross country competitions.

“Honestly, when I first got it, I thought it was fake,” said Paul, a sophomore at Whitman. “I forwarded it to my mom and said, ‘Look at this.’ She said, ‘There’s no way this is real.’ ”

But it was, and on Jan. 31, she boarded a plane to Iceland with 11 other high school athletes from around the United States to compete in the international meet.

Paul was selected to go, in part, because of the skills she showcased at last year’s New Balance Indoor and Outdoor National meets, which also are run by the National Scholastic Athletics Foundation, and her outdoor 400-meter state title last June, said NSAF board member, travel team coach, and former Mepham track and field coach Paul Limmer.

“We knew that she was a very young kid and, according to her coaches, she had everything going for herself: personality, brains, ability to get along with teams, all that sort of stuff,” Limmer said. “She’s genuinely a great kid.”

Limmer said the trip does not affect Paul’s high school or NCAA eligibility because it is legal to pay the expenses of an athlete who qualifies for a national team.

Paul — who won the state outdoor 400 last year — was fourth in that event in Reykjavik in 57.54 seconds and ran the third leg of the 4x200-relay team that finished second in 1:38.09.

“My 400 went pretty well,” she said. “I think I got out pretty slow, so I had to make up a lot at the end, but I still ran OK.”

The group competed against older athletes, most in their mid-to-late 20s.

“Seeing them in the warm-up, I was a little nervous,” Paul said. “But you just have to do what you have to do and get through it. I really wasn’t that nervous when I got up to the line.”

For the relay, Paul said she was not accustomed to running on the third leg and needing to execute a baton handoff. As Whitman’s top athlete, she is typically the anchor andhas to worry only about receiving the final pass. This, in combination with the fact that the members of her team barely knew one another, was an initial source of concern.

But not for long.

“The night before, we went to the stadium and did handoffs,” Paul said. “We just made sure that our sticks were all good. All our handoffs were perfect, so we weren’t really nervous about it . . . When we got to the meet, our handoffs were perfect. When I got the baton, we were still in first place.”

She added, “I received, then I handed it off to Charlee [Crawford, of Delaware] and she took off. On her leg, she was running against this super-fast girl from Iceland, she’s like their star. She was [older] and tall, but Charlee did really well.”

Paul said the flight to Iceland took approximately five and a half hours and was a little shorter on the way back. As far as the weather was concerned, it was nothing worse than a typical mid-winter day on Long Island, with temperatures in the high 20s.

“It wasn’t terrible,” she said. “I was expecting it to be a little colder.”

While the trip was short and mostly was spent competing, Paul and her teammates did get to do some sightseeing while driving through the countryside and visited an interactive theatre that simulated what it would be like to fly over Iceland.

“It was a life-changing experience and definitely something I will remember forever,” she said.

As soon as Paul returned from Iceland, she got right back to business at Whitman, qualifying for the state championships by winning the 300 in 40.25 seconds at the Suffolk state qualifier on Feb. 10. She’ll run that event at states on March 7 at Ocean Breeze Athletic Complex on Staten Island.

“My legs weren’t tight or anything,” she said of the state-qualifier victory. “I was completely fine. I was a little nervous going into the 300 because I knew I was racing [Half Hollow Hills West’s Michele Daye]. But I just went into it with a clear mind. For the prelims, I wanted to come in first but get a good lane. I did exactly that. My prelim time was [41.30] . . . In the finals, we were neck-and-neck until the last 100 [meters]. I cut out and beat her on the last [100].”

Now, after a whirlwind late January/early February, Paul has some significant time off. She is scheduled to compete only once before the state championships, giving her plenty of prep time between the qualifiers and state championships.

“I think it gives you some time to prepare in practice, relax and make sure your muscles are recovered,” Paul said of the break. “But I don’t know that I like that it’s a whole month until states and nationals. I think it’s a little too much time.”

Paul said she will be running the 300 at the Long Island Elite meet on Feb. 29 in hopes of getting a better seed time for the state championships. Her 39.99, run at the Bishop Loughlin Games in December, was the fastest time on Long Island and sixth-fastest time in the state as of Thursday, according to milesplit.com.