MONTGOMERY -- Mountain Lake/Butterfield-Odin's duo of Sierra Harder and Karina Fast ran tremendous races Thursday, qualifying individually for next week's state cross country meet (at Northfield, Nov. 1) by finishing third and sixth, respectively, at the Section 2A meet at the Montgomery Golf Club.
Harder, a junior, clocked a time of 15 minutes, 40 seconds on the 4,000-meter course and finished a surprising third in the huge field of 115 runners, representing 19 teams.
Fast, who also qualified for last year's state meet, finished sixth (15:44), as the Wolverines will again send two girls to Northfield. Fast is a sophomore.
Unfortunately, ML/B-O's usual lead runner -- junior Petra Nelson, who finished fifth at last year's section meet -- came down sick Thursday morning and was not able to run in this year's meet.
Without Nelson, and without fourth runner Karen Herrig (National FFA Convention), the Wolverines were not a factor in the team scoring, finishing seventh with 203 points.
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Qualifying team-wise for the state meet were Fairmont (70) and Blue Earth Area (78), who each finished well ahead of Windom/Southwestern United (113).
The Eagles, who had two runners come close to state qualification, were a solid third in the team standings -- 41 points better than fourth-place Mankato Loyola (154).
St. James (167) was fifth, followed by Jackson County Central (175), ML/B-O (203), Madelia/Truman (223), St. Peter (273), Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop (276), New Ulm Cathedral/Sleepy Eye St. Mary's (284), Lake Crystal-Wellcome Memorial/Nicollet (303), Montgomery-Lonsdale (328), Martin County West (337), Maple River (344) and LeSeuer-Henderson (350).
Martin Luther, Sibley East and Waterville-Eysian-Morristown were each incomplete.
Leading the Eagles was freshman Merideth Hentges, who missed the top 10 (state-qualifying) by just three seconds, placing 11th with a time of 15:50.
Sophomore Emily Turner continued her fine season, finishing 14th (16:26), while freshman Kelcey Olson (25th, 16:45), sophomore Chelsea Garrison (31, 16:52) and sophomore Cassie Cselovszki (37, 17:06) completed the W/SWU scoring.
Freshman Amy Green (39, 17:08) and junior Emily Grandprey (43, 17:17) were the sixth and seventh Eagles.
JCC was led by eighth-grader Angela Handzus, who finished 17th, clocked at 16:30.
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Completing the scoring for the Huskies were Leslie Handzus (23, 16:37), Kinbrae Bezdicek (32, 16:53), Megan Johnson (52, 17:33) and Hope Belknap (56, 17:39).
Brittney Kruse (62, 17:59) and Sarah Voehl (74, 18:24) were JCC's sixth and seventh runners.
Nadya Bucklin (17:30) was ML/B-O's third runner, followed by Jill Langland (65, 18:09), Ashton Nelson (87, 18:59) and Hannah Hildebrandt (103, 20:29).
