The Big Lake cross-country boys and girls teams had near perfect conditions as they traveled to Stones Throw Golf course in Milaca for the 50th Annual Milaca Mega Meet last week.
“The entire day is quite a spectacle,” said Big Lake Coach Todd Trutna. “From the double row of busses that stretches down the road for ¾ of a mile, to the team camp tent city that pops-up, to 18 races that start every 15 minutes, to the 4,000 runners that are participating, it is a hard scene to describe to people that have not been there.”
The Mega-Meet has grade specific races for just seventh, eighth, ninth, and 10th grades boys and girls. For this reason, Trutna typically doesn’t run his normal varsity squad and instead lets runners compete in their grade races.
“It’s a chance for the underclassmen to see how they rank against others in their grade from across the state,” he said. “However, with our boy’s varsity team currently ranked third in the state, we decided to run our full line-up to see how we stack-up against some teams we may not see too often.”
Hornet runners had some great performances and Trutna saw a vast majority of his runners have their best times of the year.
“It is great for the athletes to see their hard work starting to pay off,” he said.
Gavin Donner and Alayna Boe had their best times by about two minutes. Alton Ahamed was Big Lake’s top eighth grade boy with a 36th place finish. Spencer Vold finished in 26th place in the largest race of the day, the boys’ junior varsity race, with just under 500 runners.
Emilee Doperalski ran the 10th grade race and took home an award for her 16th place finish.
The boys’ varsity team was led by senior Christian Noble’s third place finish. He was quickly followed by the duo of Owen Layton, fourth, and Kade Layton eighth. Freshman Jack Leuer was 23rd. Tanon Jacobson and David Guyse ran to 52nd and 54th place finishes, and Luke Hugo was the teams seventh runner in 100th place.
“Our boys ran a pretty even race,” Trutna said. “We have been working the last couple weeks on controlling our pace at the start of the race and having the confidence to finish/race strong at the end.”
Trutna noted that most of the other teams took the race out very quickly, but his squad kept to their game plan and at the mile marker they hit their goal pace.
“If you would have taken a team score at the mile mark, I don’t think our team would have been in the top five or six,” said Trutna. “But by the end of the 3.1 miles, our team had a score of 89 points to win the team title, beating Fargo North 100, Delano 148, and Marshall 164, and 16 other teams.”
“It is the first time that a Big Lake team has taken a team title at the Mega Meet. As we approach the last third of the season, I feel our entire team is ready to finish strong,” he said.
