Area runners to compete at state C-C meet
File photo by Jeremy Behnke Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s/Sleepy Eye/New Ulm Cathedral senior Clare Fischer will compete at the Class A girls’ state cross-country meet this Saturday in Northfield.
File photo by Jeremy Behnke Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop eighth-grader Madyson Steele will compete at the Class A girls’ state cross-country meet this Saturday in Northfield.
File photo by Jeremy Behnke Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s/Sleepy Eye/New Ulm Cathedral senior Clare Fischer will compete at the Class A girls’ state cross-country meet this Saturday in Northfield.
File photo by Jeremy Behnke Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop eighth-grader Madyson Steele will compete at the Class A girls’ state cross-country meet this Saturday in Northfield.
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NORTHFIELD -- Three area runners will now turn their attention to the Class A State Cross-Country meet this Saturday at St. Olaf College in Northfield.
Sleepy Eye St. Mary's/Sleepy Eye/New Ulm Cathedral senior Clare Fischer, Madelia/Truman/Granada-Huntley-East Chain/Martin Luther freshman Josiah Demaris, and Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop freshman Madyson Steele will all compete on Saturday morning on the challenging course and all are hoping to finish the 2021 season with a strong meet.
Fischer, who is a senior from New Ulm Cathedral, won the Section 2A meet last Friday in Blue Earth with a time of 19:38.48. While it was one of her better races this year, she'd like to eclipse her season-best time of 19:29 at the Milaca Mega Meet, where she took fifth overall. That meet was some of her best competition of the year and she said that it pushed her to do well with competitive runners all over at the meet.
The senior has her hopes set high at state meet.
"Clare's goal at state is to get into the top 15 in the state of Minnesota," her coach Lisa Hagen said. "She is running strong, mentally and physically. Looking at the state rankings, it's entirely possible for her to hit 12th place."
Fischer said she does better as the competition gets better. She won the Tomahawk Conference meet also this year, which was held a couple of weeks ago.
"A lot of my race times this year kind of depend on the competition," she said at the Tomahawk Conference meet on October 19. "Up there, [Milaca], I was racing against 300 other runners, but here [the Tomahawk meet], there's not as many people right up in front of me or right behind me that I can run against."
While Fischer has been one of the top runners in the Tomahawk Conference for several years, the conference saw a newcomer who could be a threat for years to come.
Steele, just an eighth-grader, took second at the Tomahawk Conference meet (21:01.89) and she finished fourth overall at the Section 2A meet in 20:12.94. Steele will be making her state meet debut on Saturday.
Another first-timer at the state meet is Demaris, who is just a freshman. His best time this year was 17:06 at the Fairmont I-90 Invitational on October 7.
He won the Valley Conference meet at Martin County West on October 19 at Fox Lake Golf Course in Sherburn, finishing in 17:20.15 and he finished in the Top 5 in seven meets, Top 10 in three meets, and he was 11th overall in the Montgomery meet, which had 35 teams and 202 runners. He has a goal of trying to finish in the Top 50 at the state meet and his goal time is 17:10 or better.