Next year, Birmingham, England, will host the 2022 Commonwealth Games. That's followed by the world junior championships. But even this year's Tokyo Paralympics are not entirely out of the question.

The 15-year-old will head to the ACT Athletics Championships in late January, an event at which Paralympics Australia and Athletics Australia will host international classification.

It's a compulsory step for potential international athletes.

Cooper came home from last month's NSW All Schools Athletics Championships with three medals and an Australian under 16 record in her T38 classification, for athletes with cerebral palsy.

After a year in which most representative track and field was non-existent, Cooper claimed silver in the under 12-15 girls para 200m, and bronze in 100m and 800m.

"I was happy to be back running. I didn't go as well as I wanted to in my 100 and 200 but I still placed," Cooper said.

"In my 800, I was aiming to get the under 16 Australian record and I ended up getting that so I was pretty proud of myself."

Cooper took three seconds off the national under 16 record in her favourite event stopping the clock at 3.00.44

"It felt really good. In my first lap I felt a bit slow but it didn't turn out to be slow at all," she said.

Cooper's 100m (15.09s) and 200m (31.2s) times weren't personal bests. Both were slightly slower than her gold medal-winning efforts at the NSW Junior Championships last February (14.63s and 30.19s respectively).

National carnivals were both casualties of the pandemic. But the placings at NSW All Schools earned Cooper a spot on the NSW Merit team (in lieu of an Australian titles) and qualifies her for NSW Juniors next month.

Despite struggling with shin splints, she's not too far off an Olympic qualifying time for the 400m. Technically, her best for the single lap is 1.11 but she's tipped to go a lot quicker.

"My goal is to try to get the Tokyo qualifier for 400m. The qualifier is 1.06, and no-one's qualifed for 400 yet from Australia," she said.

"With all my training and because I've got a lot stronger, I'm close to 1.05. But you have to run it at an AA (Athletics Australia) meet."

Cooper is one of the Southern Sports Academy's six individual scholarships holders for 2021, supporting talented athletes competing at higher levels.

The Gundagai High student trains with coach Jamie Gould in Batlow three days a week, and said she's inspired by 18-year-old Rhiannon Clarke, a sprinter from Perth who also has cerebral palsy.