When Griffin Kushen was leading the freshman basketball team in scoring at Tesoro High, he was certain about his future.

“Basketball was my life,” he said.

He was a shooting guard who had played club basketball since he was 9. Two older brothers had been cross-country and track athletes at Tesoro, so his parents kept nagging him to stay open-minded.

“I was really anti-cross-country and anti-running,” he said.

He still went out for cross-country and track to please his parents. And something magical happened — he was good at it.

“I was all basketball,” he said. “As I got better in running, the team environment drew me in and the competitiveness. I found something in the sport of running that was never there in basketball. Don’t get me wrong. Basketball has been my sport for so long.”

Kushen became such an elite runner that he’s headed to a basketball school — Duke — to run cross-country and track.

“I’ll get to see some great games,” he said.

He won the Southern Section Division 2 championship in cross-country in the fall, was second at the state championships and on Saturday is set to run in a mile race at the Arcadia Invitational that includes New Zealand high school phenom Sam Ruthe, who ran 3 minutes 58.35 seconds last month.

“Winning an Arcadia race is something special, the most prestigious race in America,” Kushen said.