How Long Have I Been Here??

Game date: Saturday, Oct. 27, 2018 Who: Medford Girls Cross Country Team Where: The Ridges Golf Course, Wisconsin Rapids What: WIAA Division 2 State Championship Meet Final score: 1. Medford 106; 2. Freedom, 115; 3. Notre Dame, 118.

During prep cross country meets, most people see seven individuals running for each school or team aiming for individual achievement, whether it’s a personal-best time, a better time than a previous race on a certain course, beating a rival you haven’t beaten before or all-conference recognition.

But when you see the team aspect of the sport kick in, it can be beautiful to watch.

Without question, Medford’s team effort in the 2018 WIAA Division 2 state championship race was one of those moments.

On a gray but relatively comfortable day in Wisconsin Rapids, none of the seven Raiders who filled varsity spots were among the top 15 finishers in the field of 152 runners. No one put a single digit number by her name in the team scoring.

But collectively, the Raiders did their jobs and brought home the coveted gold trophy.

For whatever reason, the Raiders came into the meet under the radar. They only meet all season long they didn’t win was the massive Griak Invitational hosted by the University of Minnesota. They won their second straight Great Northern Conference title, beating Lakeland by 10 points. They won the Colby-Abbotsford sectional by 29 points over the 2017 state runnerup Wisconsin Dells.

Yet, they fell three spots to sixth in the Wisconsin Cross Country Coaches Association rankings in the pre-state week. Even Lakeland was a spot ahead of them.

“It was kind of confusing I guess I would say because Lakeland was ranked above us but we beat them before,” senior Grace Kelley would say after the state race. “But you can’t really trust those because you don’t know how it will play out.”

How much the “snub” motivation may have helped is hard to quantify. What certainly helped, according to head coach Kevin Wellman, was the weight that was lifted off Medford’s shoulders by just qualifying for state after the Raiders came up just short at sectional meets the previous two years.

The performance at Colby showed Medford was peaking and ready for state.

The team’s scoring started with sophomore Alicia Kawa, who was making her second straight state appearance, and junior Franny Seidel, who was running at state for the second time in three seasons.

Though the pace was fast among the leaders, as you would expect with the state’s best of the best, they hung in the teens throughout the race and finished 17th and 19th overall and 10th and 12th in the team scoring with their best times of the year, 19:44.4 and 19:52.6.

The rest of the crew excelled in their first state cross country appearances.

Kelley capped a fantastic year that wound up givng her a chance to run at Winona State in 2019 by taking 24th overall in a personalbest 19:57.5. She was 15th in team scoring.

Green Bay Notre Dame’s first three runners outscored Medford’s 21-37, but freshman Jennifer Kahn closed the gap slightly by finishing 54th overall and 31st in team scoring with her personal-best time of 20:40.5.

She was one spot ahead of Notre Dame’s fourth runner. Through four runners, the Tritons were ahead of Medford 53-68. The top five runners from defending champion Freedom all scored between 14 and 28 team points, giving the Irish a total score of 115.

Notre Dame’s fifth runner did not cross the finish line until the 21:23.3 mark and was in 65th place in the team scoring. Of course, she didn’t know it at the time, but the door was sitting open for Medford senior Lauren Meyer to slam shut on the rest of the field. The fouryear standout didn’t disappoint, coming in 65th overall and 38th among team competitors at 20:51.4, giving the Raiders their final score of 106 and a nine-point margin over Freedom.

Freshman Alexis Fleegel finished 79th overall, improving 14 spots over the last 1.1 miles, with a personal-best time of 21:01.5 and junior Paige Brandner was 112th in 21:42.7, a little more than a second off her season-best time.

In the mass of humanity that crowded the finish line, the Raiders were able to find a spot to huddle and watch the scoreboard count down the team scores. That’s when they learned they had earned their sport’s ultimate prize.

A closer look at the results sheet showed the second mile was huge for the Raiders. Kelley moved up 14 spots to 23rd in that mile and held steady down the stretch. Kahn moved up 10 spots to 55 and got one more runner in the last 1.1 miles. Meyer was 97th after one mile but 72nd after two and gained seven more spots in home stretch. Brandner moved up eight spots in mile two.

If they stayed loose and stuck to their plans, the Raiders were certain that they were, at minimum, a top-three team. Turns out, they were better than that.

“Honestly, it’s the best feeling,” Meyer said at the awards presentation. “We went into this year thinking the goal was just to make it to state. We never could’ve wished for a better ending.”

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