NCAA D-II CROSS COUNTRY CHAMPIONSHIP - STRONG AT THE FINISH

NCAA D-II CROSS COUNTRY CHAMPIONSHIP

While the goal of one last personal record eluded her on the rain-soaked course, Franny Seidel ended her running career with the University of Minnesota-Duluth last month competing against the best and at her best.

The 2020 graduate of Medford Area Senior High placed 86th out of 259 finishers in the NCAA Division II cross country championship race, held Saturday, Nov. 23 in Sacramento, Calif. on the Arcade Creek Cross Country Course.

It was the second national appearance for Seidel, who also ran as part of UMD’s team in Seattle in 2022. She was an alternate on UMD’s 2021 nationalqualifying team. This time, Seidel ran alone as the Bulldogs’ lone individual qualifier. She finished the 6K race in a time of 22:02.9, which ranked as the third-best time of her final fall of eligibility. She came into the race off her best-ever times of 21:12.1 at the Oct. 26 Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference meet and 21:29.4 at the NCAA Division II Central Region meet held Nov. 9.

“It was the last race so I’m not even giving myself the option to have any regrets about it,” Seidel said in a Nov. 25 interview. “I improved quite a bit from my national place and time from Seattle two years ago. I’m focusing on that, the positives and how much higher I finished in the race. It’s the best of the best mostly at that meet, so it was cool to be able to finish in the top 100.”

Seidel improved 115 places from the 2022 national race when she posted a time of 23:17.4.

“Franny had an amazing race,” UMD head coach Brette Jensen said in a school press release. “With not ideal course conditions, she handled everything so well like the veteran runner she is. Right away she established herself with great positioning and moved up significantly throughout the race. Finishing inside the top 100 when only two years ago she finished 201st is a testament to who Franny is and the growth she has maintained.”

“The course is pretty flat,” Seidel said.

“Normally it’s a really fast course, but it had rained three days prior to the meet. Friday when I was there running on it, it was downpouring and it rained right before my race, so it was a little soggy. That definitely impacted the times a little.

“I was more just focused on seeing what I could do in my last one,” she added. “I had support from friends and family that flew out there. It’s a really good spectator course. They were everywhere kind of helping me move along. It was a lot of fun. I was just happy with how it ended.”

The end came with some sadness for Seidel but also much satisfaction in a cross country and track and field career where she said she had to learn a lot early on, but she kept working and steadily improved to the point where she became the team’s top runner in her fifth fall in the cross country program and an All-NSIC and All-Region performer. She also was recently named to the NSIC’s All-Academic Team for the 2024 fall season.

Seidel and the Bulldogs competed in four regular-season meets this fall before the NSIC meet. Seidel was fourth out of 52 runners in 22:43.7 at the UW-River Falls Rivertown Invitational where the Bulldogs tied Carleton College for the top team spot with 30 points. UMD won the tiebreaker. At the Roy Griak Invitational hosted by the University of Minnesota on Sept. 20, Seidel was 21st out of 303 finishers in the Women’s Maroon 6K. Her time was 23:41.6 as UMD was sixth out of 24 teams. Her time dropped to 22:37 in Carleton’s Running of the Cows meet on Oct. 5. She placed eighth out of 298 runners as the team took second, just behind Carleton. A week later at the Lewis Crossover, she was 74th out 336 finishers in 22:41.8 as the team was 18th out of 36 squads.

Seidel said her top goal for the fall was for the team to get to the national championship meet.

“It’s always a goal to get back there, but it was more of a team goal I would say,”she said. “We’ve done it before as a team and we had a lot of returners. I think all of my teammates are super talented. So we’re like let’s always make it the goal. We had a really strong finish at conference and we improved at Lewis, beating some other conference teams in regionals. We were hoping to be able to make that last jump to beat a couple more teams and get a bid or automatically qualify but it didn’t pan out that way.”

Seidel, though, excelled as the season wound down. At the conference meet, hosted by Minot State, she earned one of the 10 first-team All-NSIC spots with her eighth-place finish. Then at the NCAA regional in Joplin, Mo., she was 12th out of 219 finishers. That didn’t automatically qualify for her for the national meet, but she found out two days later she had made it through the NCAA’s at-large selection process.

“The goal was kinda just leave it all out there and see how fast we could run, get a couple more PRs and that was cool that that was able to happen,” Seidel said. “I really wanted to medal in conference and I was able to achieve that. Medalling at regionals was just like, ‘wow I didn’t know I would do that.’” The team took 12th which wasn’t nearly enough to qualify for the championship.

“It’s always been a lot of fun to go as a team and be there racing with your teammates, going on the trip with your team and doing everything before the race and not being alone,” Seidel said. “I kinda missed my teammates. One more race as a team would’ve been fun. Still it was super cool to go and I’m grateful for the experience, but it was a little weird without the women there to do all the prerace stuff with.”

After a highly-successful high school cross country and track career at Medford, Seidel said the adjustment to being a collegiate student-athlete was tough at first. Arriving at Duluth in the middle of the Covid pandemic and coaching changes in the UMD program early in her career weren’t easy to navigate. But she credited Jensen and Karly Brautigam, who is the director of UMD’s track and cross country program, for keeping her pointed in the right direction.

“They have both helped me so much,” Seidel said. “With them it’s not just all about running. It’s about being in college and having like your life too. They helped me develop into the best athlete I think I could have ever been. They are always so supportive. I’m so thankful I had such a positive experience as a collegiate athlete because of them. They made it such a good environment and I think a lot of my teammates would attest to that too.”

The pandemic resulted in Seidel gaining this fifth fall of eligibility and she said she could’ve competed in indoor track this winter. But once she wraps up student teaching this week at Proctor, Minn. High School, she will be done with school. She will continue working at Proctor for the rest of the school year and hopes to help coach track and field there this spring.

As for track, Seidel hit her groove when she moved to more of a middle-distance role, which she said she enjoyed. Her personal best in the 1,500-meter run was 4:37.44, which she hit in the NSIC Outdoor preliminaries last spring. Her personal-best 800-meter time was 2:12.98 which she got while winning the race at St. Thomas’ Joe Sweeney Invite back in 2023.

“There were a lot of new adjustments,” Seidel said, looking back on her progress since 2020. “I feel like it took me my whole freshman year to get my feet under me and figure out that this is how I have to do everything and figure out my priorities. There was a lot of learning how to balance things that first year. As I got more of that balance figured out, more comfortable with this new routine of running, being in school, being in college, I got a little more confident in all of my abilities. With running I was able to see more success in these last couple of years being a little older and having it all figured out.”

Franny Seidel