Above: Gritting his teeth and sprinting hard for the finish, Joey Chmelik (2091) broke 18 minutes for the 5k and qualified for the state meet with his 16th place finish. Left: Audrey Summer (2145) ran the race of her life in the Section 7A final, but just missed qualifying for state by 7 seconds. Above left: Wearing bib 2147, Morgan Weyrens- Welch improved her time by two minutes from her last race at the Section meet.
On Thursday, October 24, Viking Cross Country raced at the Section 7A Cross Country meet in Cloquet. Going into the day we knew that Audrey Summers and Joey Chmelik, both Cook County seniors, were in the hunt to qualify for state. We estimated that Audrey would have to be in 11th place or better to make it to State as the ruling is to take the top 8 after they remove those who qualified through being one of the top two teams in the section. The top two teams move on to the State meet.
Audrey ran the race of her life, finishing her 4k in 16:04. She went out with guts, she held on strong to her position and she sprinted when she was totally exhausted. Her race was perfect—so perfect that she beat everyone on the winning team from South Ridge.
The bummer about this scenario is that meant South Ridge didn’t have any in front of her, so she actually needed to come in 10th place instead of 11th. She missed going to state by 7 seconds. It was a bittersweet moment.
For Joey Chmelik, it was a bit different. The two top boys’ teams we estimated (Crosby-Ironton and Proctor) were going to have four individuals in the top 16, so that meant Joey needed to come in 16th or better to make it to State. He too went out with guts, a ton of guts, and was in the top pack. Some of us were worried if he would be able to hang on. He slowly moved back but he kept his place and came in 16th place with a personal best time of 17:59 and his goal was to make it to State and break 18 minutes for the season. He was able to check both of those off of his list.
On the girls’ side the wining team was South Ridge followed by International Falls. Our girls came in 7th place out of 15 teams overall. On the boys’ side the team of Crosby-Ironton came in first followed by Proctor. Our Vikings finished in 6th place out of 16 teams. Kailee Kiminski, from Esko, won the meet with a 4k time of 15:20. Sam Johnson of Mesabi East was the overall winner for the boys with a time of 16:24 for the 5k race.
It was a nice finish to the season as most of our kids ran their personal best times for the season or cut off much time from the season before at this meet. Maya McHugh came in 19th with a time of 16:56 and was one minute faster than last year. She was followed by Abigale Seipke in 33rd with a time of 17:03, which was 48 seconds faster than last year.
Then we had a nice duo of Alyssa Martinson with 18:10 and Matea Acero with 18:11. Alyssa has been a consistently tough varsity runner for us this year. She worked hard over the summer and last year she was just one of our junior varsity runners. Matea has been working to get back into racing the entire season and she finished with tears of joy as she finished with an improvement over last year at this race. Ruby Walsberg had a breakthrough day with a time of 19:01 and she was followed by Morgan Weyrens- Welch, who was back strong from her injury, running two minutes better from our last race and with a time of 19:43. Each of the girls was able to celebrate a nice finish to the season.
The boys’ team had a similar experience. Kiviok Hight finished in 24th with a 5k time of 18:29. He went out conservative and moved forward at a nice strong pace. He is going to be a key player for our team as we move to the next season.
He was followed by Sean MacDonell who took over one minute off of his time from last year and ran 18:58. Pete Summers worked his way forward for a nice finish with a time of 19:04. Nate Carlson had a nice strong finish to his season with a time of 19:40 and he was followed by dependable Will Seaton who came in with a time of 19:47 and a personal record.
As we look to next year it is fun to think about the amount of depth that we have within these two teams and the young kids. We are only loosing a few seniors, which means that if these kids keep working through the summer we could be very good in the next few years.
Joey Chmelik will be making his way down to St. Olaf College to run the State meet on November 2 at 2 p.m. Go Vikings!
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