Above left: Pete Summers placed 31st in the Eveleth cross country meet to help the Vikings to a third place finish. Above right: Julia Larsen improved the most of any of her teammates at Eveleth. Julia ran 13:23 for 1.5 miles.
The Eveleth Invitational is always a good early season measure of where our cross country teams are. Sixteen of the 22 teams in Section 7A are there. All the teams have had smaller early season meets to get used to the hard pace of high school racing. We felt pretty ready, guessing top half, but not a contender for the trophies that go to the top two teams. We did better than we thought we would.
The girls provided our first positive surprise. With the graduation of top runner Sarissa Falk and a nagging injury to our number 2 runner Matea Acero, repeating last year’s 4th place team finish looked tough. Senior Audrey Summers set the pace for us early, running near the front throughout the race and finishing 11th out of 121 racers. Her time of 17:01 was only 13 seconds behind Sarissa’s time from last year, and about 30 seconds behind the state contenders in the Section. She’s poised to have a great senior season.
Right behind was eighthgrader Maya McHugh, placing 14th in 17:08. Ninth-grader Alyssa Martinson has made a great step forward, running 18:12 for 34th place. About 30 seconds back, sophomore Abi Seipke placed 43rd, while Matea completed our scoring with a steady 19:43. They combined to earn the Vikings another 4th place team finish. Notable among our other competitors in the combined varsity/JV race was our second Austrian exchange student, Patricia Mueck from Two Harbors. Patricia had never done a competitive race and was pretty worried at the start. She persevered and finished with a big smile in 22:58, ahead of almost 20 other girls.
Above: Audrey Summers and a smiling Maya McHugh are the top two girls on the cross country team this year. Both put in a good summer of running and both have made great strides in their development as distance runners.
The boys turned in an even more surprising finish. We knew senior Joey Chmelik would be in the hunt—and he was, finishing 11th in 19:00 for the 5K race. We also knew our sophomore trio of Sean MacDonell, Pete Summers and Will Seaton would be solid, and they were, finishing 21st, 31st, and 46th respectively in the 140-runner field. But our big surprise was our star eighth-graders, Kiv Hight and Jake Peron from Two Harbors. Although they had dominated the junior high race at our home meet, neither had competed at the varsity level. They ran a smart race, however, with Kiv pacing with Sean, and Jake with Will. They even had the audacity to pull away from their mentors, with Kiv placing 18th and Jake in 42nd. When the team scores were tallied, the Vikings were 3rd, beating traditional powerhouses Mesabi East, Eveleth and Virginia. Outstanding! The return of junior Rusty Day was a pleasant development for the Vikings, as he worked off some summer rust, running 22:59 for 94th place.
With many of our young runners taking on the varsity/JV race, we only had four representatives in the junior high race. Julia Larsen probably gets the gold star of the meet, as she put in the best effort of her career, running 13:23 for the 1.5 mile race, 2½ minutes faster than last year.
Next up for the Vikings is the Milaca MegaMeet, one of the biggest high school races in the nation. Always a zoo. Go Vikings!
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