MHSAA State Meet

State Meet!!!  It's the final meet of the season and only seven athletes are allowed on the starting line. Those seven athletes represent themselves, their 44 teammates and Saline High School.  We've talked all season about how the 51 runners on our team will push forward together to maximize our performance at the state meet.  It sure happened yesterday! 

Many current athletes, outside of our state meet team of 13, showed up to support the team.  The state team definitely felt that support and it spurred them on to out-perform the predicted finish of 8th or 9th in the state.  We finished 5th overall with 202 points and were not far from 3rd place (186 points) and 4th place (189 points).  

The weather was outstanding, the team was rested and ready.  They knew exactly what they needed to do to achieve their goal of a top 5 finish.  Each of the athletes executed perfectly and did what they set out to do.  The only "bad" thing that happened was at the starting line where an official had difficulty distinguishing between navy blue shorts and black.  That issue was quickly resolved and we moved forward with what we can control.  Note to self, next year bring color swatches to the starting line 😀.

I've written this for every single race this year, Laney Alig led the Hornets across the line with a 15th place (18:25), all state finish.  Corynn Gady (18:51) ran a great race and was next in 39th place.  She was followed by sophomore Lilly Schlack (19:19) in 73rd place.  Sophie Roth ran a 19:22, in part due to a monster kick of 32 seconds over the final 0.1 miles of the race to finish 79th.  She was two places ahead of Nancy Gage (19:25) who ran a PR in her final XC race in a Saline jersey.  That's a storybook end to a fantastic XC experience for her at Saline.  Nancy was followed by Abby Roth (20:21) who overcame a rough start to finish in 169th place.  Grace Roth rounded out the Saline runners with a very strong 20:33 for 186th place.  

A special shout out to our first two alternates yesterday, Mackenzie Sellenraad and Grace Oberski.  They had the difficult job of remaining vigilant all week, even up to the starting gun.  We asked them to be prepared, possibly at a moments notice, to jump into the race.  Both of them handled this responsibility with dignity and the appropriate attention.  While they did not end up racing, it was comforting to their teammates and the coaching staff that they were ready to race if needed.  

Coaches Lagerquist, Harrison and I are so incredibly proud of what this team of 51 runners has accomplished this year.  The 7 athletes on the starting line did their jobs and 20:33 after they started, they were 5th in the state. We appreciate all of the support this team has received from parents, athletes, alumni and Saline Area Schools administration.  Collectively, we all share in this 5th place finish as we pushed the 7 across the line yesterday.