Balanced Rebel girls finish fourth among 14 teams in big meet
By: Les Knutson
Murray County News Sports
Paced by another impressive upfront individual performance by state-ranked sophomore Morgan Gehl, the Murray County Central / Fulda Rebels enjoyed a fine day at Mountain Lake last Wednesday morning (August 30) as the varsity girls finished fourth — among 14 teams — in the huge Paul Metcalf Invitational high school cross country meet.
Minnesota’s fourth-ranked Class A girls’ cross country runner, Gehl displayed her amazing long-distance running stamina from the opening gun and stretched her lead over the challenging hills of the Mountain Lake Golf Course, winning the race by more than 18 seconds over fifth-ranked Tenley Nelson, an emerging freshman from Luverne High School.
Gehl completed the 5,000-meter (3.1 miles) course in an amazing time of 18 minutes, 17 seconds — nearly a minute faster than her winning time of 19:12.5 in the same meet last year.
Nelson was clocked at 18:35.4 Wednesday, 28 seconds ahead of sixth-ranked MaKenna Thurston (19:03.7), a senior for the Lake Crystal-Wellcome Memorial / Nicollet. While the lead three were far ahead and fairly-well spread out, the race for fourth was close between Luverne sophomore Regan Feit (19:50.6), Fairmont freshman Laura Thompson (19:58.3) and Fairmont senior Sarah Krumholz (20:07.6).
Martin County West sophomore Marissa Whitehead, ranked seventh in Class A, was a distant seventh with a time of 20:29.2 this year. She was second last year (19:28.1) after winning at Mountain Lake in 2016. Thurston (19:40.2) and Thompson (19:50.3) finished third and fourth, respectively, in 2017 behind Gehl and Whitehead.
“Morgan really looked smooth Wednesday,” declared Rebels’ head coach Dominick Damm. “Her time improvement from last year is really good, comparatively much better than most of the other top runners.”
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