Warriors, Trojans run to titles in Mountain Lake; Gehl wins for MCC/F, Lietz for WHS – Daily Globe

With a total of 342 finishing runners — competing in six races — spread among the 14 represented teams, the 2019 season unfolded on the grass and slopes of the Mountain Lake Country Club with cool and somewhat breezy conditions prevailing.

The combination of Murray County Central and Fulda had all five of its scoring runners finish among the top 19 in the varsity girls’ event and won the team title with a low score of 38 (team places 1-6-8-9-14), 17 points better than second-place Fairmont’s total of 55 (2-7-10-11-25).

Leading the way for the Warriors was the gutsy individual gold-medal performance by junior Morgan Gehl — Minnesota’s top-ranked Class A runner — who came from behind down the final stretch to just nip Fairmont sophomore Lauren Thompson a foot before entering the finish chute.

“It was close at the end,” said Gehl, who led most of the 5,000-meter distance before Thompson caught her and took the lead with about 1,000 meters left. “It was a good race, that’s for sure. I had to give it everything I had to catch back up at the finish.”

Gehl’s winning time was 19:29.1, while Thompson — who had the fastest time at the Fairmont Early Bird on Aug. 23 — was clocked at 19:29.2.

The varsity boys’ race up front, over the same course, was a three-way challenge all the way between Worthington seniors Christian Lietz and Adam Koller, along with Seth Pierson, a senior for St. James Area. While those three cruised ahead of the field of 75 finishers, Trojan junior Jordan Meledez and freshman teammate Mikele Walu ran side-by-side challenging for fourth place.

Lietz (16:50.3) finished the strongest, pulling away from Koller (16:54.1) down the final slope, while Walu (16:55.6) passed Pierson (16:58.3) as all four completed the 3.1-mile distance in less than 17 minutes.

“Those are great early-season times,” praised Worthington head coach Cory Smidt of those lead-run performances. “We had super runs by our front four.”

Meledez finished fifth (17:05.3) and sophomore Alec Langerud (18:49.7) locked up the Trojans third consecutive Metcalf Invite team victory by placing 18th.

Those five places (1-2-3-5-18) yielded a winning score of 29, improving on last year’s first-place tally of 61 and scoring 19 points better than Worthington’s winning total of 48 two years ago.

St. James (4-6-10-12-15) displayed fine balance and earned second-place in the team standings with 47 points, while Fairmont was a distant third with 119, followed by Jackson County Central (131), Martin County West (142), Windom Area (149), Mountain Lake Area/Comfrey (164), Blue Earth Area (183) and MCC/Fulda (209). Five others — Adrian, Heron Lake-Okabena, Lake Crystal, Madelia/Truman and United South Central — were incomplete.

Windom’s Patrick Green (11th, 17:40.9) and Cameron Alm (14th, 18:12.4) were among the first 15 individual finishers and came home with medals.

Alejandro Bernal (24th, 19:17.2) and Bryan Ramirez (34th, 20:08.7) completed Worthington’s top-seven varsity performers.

While Thompson was chasing down Gehl — far ahead of everyone else — the race for third was highly-competitive between a pack of six strong challengers.

Adrian senior Moriah Bullerman emerged as the winner of that group, capturing third with her time of 20:47.1. Windom junior Gracie Bucher (20:56.8), Worthington senior Sena Uli (21:11.8), MCW junior Marissa Whitehead (21:25.7) and JCC sophomore Olivia Anderson (21:31.5) eventually separated some and claimed places 4-7.

MCC/F runners Josie Harms (10th, 22:09.1), Brylei Schreier (13th, 22:26.1), Ella Stapek (14th, 22:36.8) and Victoria Pierson (19th, 23:14.9) finished off the team victory for the Warriors, who were missing two fine runners in the Overgaauw twins — Ashley and Amanda — who were exhibiting at the State Fair.

“This was a very good team race by our girls,” beamed Warriors head coach Dominick Damm. “We had a hard workout on Monday, but were able to recover nicely and run great today.”

MCW was third in the team standings with 64 points, while Worthington (3-12-16-29-36) was fourth with its score of 96. MLA/C (119), Lake Crystal (162) and USC (165) also registered complete team tallies, while the other seven were all incomplete.

Worthington’s Madison Schaeffer finished 16th overall (12th in the team scoring) with a time of 22:50.1 as the Trojans second runner. Jenna Hoffman (21, 16, 23:25.5), Maranda Thier (36, 29, 25:02.9), Marisa Thier (45, 36, 26:14.2) and Liz Spiegelhoff (54, 42, 27:44.3) were the other varsity finishers for WHS.

Worthington freshman Ofbeka Morke clocked a winning time of 16:08.7 in the 46-runner boys’ junior varsity race over a 4,000-meter distance. Windom freshman Jacob Green was second (16:18.2) before the Trojans took the next five places, giving Worthington six of the first seven.

MCC/F freshman Megan Bakke (20:46.6) and HL-O sophomore Skylar Fisher (21:00.4) finished 1-2 in the girls’ JV race over the same course.

Fairmont’s Macy Hanson was an easy winner in the girls’ junior high 2,000-meter race, clocking a fine time of 7:56.8. JCC’s Rylie Gother finished third (9:00.4).

MLA/C’s Kody Wassman (7:11.5) and HL-O’s Tim Salentiny (7:14.5) finished out in front of the 65-runner boys’ junior high race over the same 1.25-mile distance, well ahead of the third-place time of 7:32.4.