Cross-Country: Exhausted Trost wins section title

ROCHESTER - Emi Trost needed some extra strength Thursday at the Section 1A girls cross-country meet at Northern Hills Golf Course.

Trost, a junior at Cannon Falls, was feeling weak at the 2-mile mark of the 4,000-meter race. Unsure if she could keep going and qualify for her fourth consecutive trip to the Class 1A state tournament, Trost turned to her faith.

“I said a little prayer, ‘I don’t have it today, Lord, give me strength,’” Trost said. “He helped me finish.”

And despite needing help walking after the race, she still defended her section title in 15 minutes, 26.6 seconds. Trost, who usually finishes closer to the 14-minute mark, said that Northern Hills Golf Course presented some extra challenges in addition to the terrible weather conditions.

“There’s always a hill, there’s a headwind pretty much the entire way, and the ground was soft and wet,” she said. “You didn’t have a strong base to push off from. It was windy, it was cold. … But everyone has to run in it.”

Cannon Falls head coach Ben Schopp agreed that it was a difficult course but knew Trost would never make it an excuse.

“Her attitude is great,” Schopp said. “Even after this…she won’t make excuses for anything. That’s what I love about her.”

He said that Trost’s parents also told him she doesn’t like water and Schopp thought that dehydration factored into her weariness.

“That sapped it out of her,” Schopp said of Trost’s aversion to H2O. “It’s going to affect you.”

Many runners talk about liking cooler weather, but Thursday’s cold and damp conditions are equally poor for long-distance running. Trost’s first-place finish helped Cannon Falls take ninth out of 22 teams.

“Cold saps your energy just as much as the heat,” Trost said. “You just never give up.”

Ninth-grader Katherine Hoffman placed 39th in 17:18.5, senior Amber Edwards was 74th in 18:29.4, ninth-grader Emma Thomley finished 88th in 18:58.7 and ninth-grader Rianne Lund took 94th in 19:24.4 to round out the Bombers’ runners. The Cannon Falls boys team came in 16th, with ninth-grader Bjorn Pearson finishing first in 56th place.

The Class 1A girls state cross-country meet will take place Saturday, Nov. 3 at Saint Olaf College in Northfield.

Z-M runner qualifies for state

The Zumbrota-Mazeppa/Kenyon-Wanamingo girls cross-country team took eighth place at the Section 1A cross-country meet Thursday and qualified one runner for the Class 1A state tournament.

Seventh-grader Skylar Jacobson finished in ninth place overall for the Cougars in 16 minutes, 10.6 seconds. The top eight individuals who do not run for the top two finishing teams at the section meet qualify for the state race.

Dover-Eyota won the meet with 64 points and Rochester Lourdes got second with 73 points.

Z-M/K-W ninth-grader Callie Ryan was 47th in 17:34.8, junior Emily Karl came in 59th in 18:04.4, eighth-grader Maddie Patterson finished in 18:05.5, good for 60th and junior Kate Bohn took 82nd in 18:41.3.

The Cougars’ boys team took 12th overall. Their top two runners were junior Ben Nystuen, who placed 36th in 18:44.9, and sophomore Micah Grove in 41st with a time of 18:53.6.

Tags: cannon falls, sports, prep, cross-country, zumbrota, mazeppa