With her mom, Dr. Lisa Moscoso, working at Washington University and her older siblings Annalise and John Harry having attended the school and run track, it may have seemed inevitable that Lizzie Wagner would also end up at WashU. For a while, it seemed she would neither attend the school nor run track, but in the end, she is doing both.
“I grew up going to track meets and loved watching my siblings compete. I had the ‘youngest sibling mentality’ for a while, not wanting to run track or go to WashU,” Lizzie laughed thinking back on it. “The not wanting to go to WashU part went away quickly as I got older and realized what kind of school it was. I was really into WashU basketball and thought maybe I would play basketball. I quit soccer to run track to try to get better at basketball, but I realized I was clearly a lot better at track.”
The oldest sibling, Annalise, did visit a mix of Division I and Division III schools but was drawn to the school where her mom worked. “WashU was a great mix of academics and athletics with a lot of resources. It was larger than most of the schools I was looking at and it had a very exciting track program that has become even stronger. I loved the team and how WashU and the UAA prioritized your academic career and how academics and athletics build upon each other and lead to success,” commented Annalise, who was thrilled with one other aspect of the track program that she didn’t realize until she got there. “As an 800-meter runner, I didn’t have to run cross country!”
The choice to attend WashU was an easy one for John Harry. “I needed a school with academic rigor and track was something I was really interested in. Annalise really liked the team culture and then separately I had the same sense. I had the chance to go to a great school with a nice tuition benefit (thanks to their mom’s employment),” he acknowledged.
Annalise played a major role in preparing both her siblings for track and community at WashU. “She got to show me the ropes and I quickly felt inordinately comfortable because I already knew a lot of the drills. Everyone in our workout group was really close, maybe in part because Annalise and I bookended the older and younger athletes. I wish I could have done that for Lizzie, but I couldn’t do a sixth year!” John Harry quipped.
“I began running track sophomore year of high school, which turned out to be the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Annalise had recently graduated and we went to the track together. She showed me how to run the 400 and paced me through workouts. I already knew how to do the warmups when I got to WashU,” Lizzie recollected. “It was so nice to have them to look up to and help relieve the stress of expectations. I knew what a good support system the coaches were for academic and athletic support, particularly how they prioritize that we are students first. It has been a unique experience to get to watch Annalise and John Harry and then do it myself.”
Lizzie will be a senior in the fall with the 2025-26 academic year marking the 12th consecutive year a Wagner sibling will be enrolled at WashU. She is majoring in African and African American Studies and political science with a minor in psychology. “I’m not 100 percent sure what I will do when college ends but I do eventually want to go to law school. I may take a few gap years to get a little more life experience. I want to make sure going to law school is the right thing to do,” she contemplated.
Attending law school is the path Annalise took, graduating from Harvard Law in 2023. She is currently clerking for a judge and next year will be working for the law firm Loevy and Loevy in civil rights litigation.
John Harry earned his master’s degree in systems engineering from WashU in 2022 and is currently working for a St. Louis-based colorectal cancer screening company that just received Federal Drug Administration (FDA) approval in the fall of 2024. He has also delved into coaching for the first time, helping coach high school track at Rosati-Kain in St. Louis. John Harry began playing beach volleyball after his senior year and has continued playing against elevated competition ever since.