ST. BONIFACIUS — Another day, another meet won for the No. 2 Marshall girls cross country team who, on Thursday at Crown College, came in first at the Waconia Wildcat Invitational.

“It’s great to go up against some of the triple A schools and just get some good competition,” Marshall head coach Marie Sample said. “There were a lot of great runners, there were good teams and our girls just keep showing up.

“They’re very tight, they’re a close team and they function best when they focus on each other, which they’re 100% into that right now. Because of that, it’s a lot of fun for them… They’re having fun and it’s showing. This success is all kind of icing on the cake.”

The Tigers put three runners in the top 10 at the meet. Leading the pack was the Class AA No. 4 individual Allyson Sample, who finished second at the meet in 19:16.5 Chanhassen’s Marissa Long won the meet in 18:47.4.

“One thing about Ally is Ally can be really encouraging to the people behind her and say, ‘hey, you guys can come up here and you can run with me. Like you need to be up here running with me,'” coach Sample said. “She encourages them to come up and have this pack mentality we call it, it’s important. You see a lot of really good teams have it, their front runner to their fifth runner, sixth and seventh runner, their gap closes as you go through the season. So that’s what we want. We want our second, third, fourth runners up there chasing Ally. We want them up there thinking they can beat Ally.”

Taleigha Bigler and Oakley Schneekloth finished eighth and ninth at the meet in 20:09.8 and 20:10.3. Shortly behind them, Katelyn Leibfried took 11th place in 20:24.9 with St. Louis Park’s Jersey Miller breaking up the trio of Tigers.

Cameen McFarquhar rounded out Marshall scorers in 19th place at 20:51.7 while Avery Schneekloth also ran a quality race to take 29th in the 66-runner field at 21:32.7.

The Tigers put together a team score of 48 points, putting themselves well ahead of runner-up Chaska’s score of 87. Bloomington Jefferson finished third at 90 points in the field of nine scoring teams.

“They set some pretty extensive goals and they get disappointed if they don’t hit a mark or a time that they’re wanting to hit. We spend a lot of time really just encouraging them like, ‘Hey, I like what you’re doing and just keep doing what you’re doing. You’re doing a great job, things are coming together and just enjoy it,'” coach Sample said. “Enjoy every meet, enjoy every practice, enjoy being together. Because it’s really something pretty special that they’re doing right now.

“They don’t even realize how competitive they are. I think sometimes they’re just so busy doing their work and then showing up and putting it together, it means they just don’t realize how competitive they are and how well they’re doing… so yeah, I’m proud of them.”

Marshall will next compete in a meet at the University of Minnesota on Sept. 22 at 5 p.m.

Marshall boys

ST. BONIFACIUS — The No. 3 Marshall boys cross country team took third place out of a stacked field of 10 teams at the Waconia Wildcat Invitational at Crown College on Thursday. The Tigers finished the meet with 81 points, putting them back of only No. 1 Mankato East’s 44 and Class AAA No. 4 Bloomington Jefferson’s 33.

“How things played out is kind of what it was on paper. At the start of the race and watching it develop, our boys went up there where we kind of thought with our three teams [Marshall, Mankato East and Bloomington Jefferson]. We were thinking we were going to get 15 of the top 20 spots between the three teams and that’s about what happened,” Marshall head coach Brian Leibfried said. “I thought with the training we’ve had this week, we’re right where we need to be… these guys put a lot of guys before our number two today, but as a whole group, we move our guys up 14 seconds, we’re kind of right with them.”

Sam Deutz was the top Tiger in the meet, placing fifth at 16:26. Just behind him was a pack of four consecutive Bloomington Jefferson runners — Alexander and Patrick Altstatt, Ian Klein and Miles Bassett — that rounded out the Jaguars’ scorers. Bloomington Jefferson’s top finisher was third-place Zach Tapajna at 16:11. 

Chaska’s Nolan Sutter won the meet in 15:29 while Mankato East’s Isaiah Anderson and Luke Scholtes took second and fourth place at 16:01 and 16:21.

Kohen Holcomb, Landon Marthaler and Josh Leibfried took 17h, 18th and 19th place respectively for Marshall. Holcomb crossed the finish line in 17:18.2, Marthaler finished at 17:20.1 and Leibfried finished at 17:21.7, beating out Buffalo’s Kumail Akram by 0.3 seconds.

Chase Werner was Marshall’s No. 5 on the day, placing 22nd at 17:24.1, while Keagan Anderson finished shortly behind him in 24th at 17:28.5. 

“That’s kind of what we’ve been training for, kind of sticking together and going with the pack mentality,” coach Leibfried said. “What that does for you if you guys can stay right near each other, all of your guys are putting points on everybody else afterward. We feel like our sixth and seventh, although they don’t score… they’re going to be able to probably put points on other teams. So when we get tot he conference championship meets and sections, we’re really hoping that our six and seven are putting points on other teams’ fives. When that happens, that just increases your chance of moving up on that leaderboard.”

Marshall will next compete in a meet at the University of Minnesota on Sept. 22 at 5 p.m.

“With our training schedule, those three meets we had are pretty close together. And then actually before this meet, we didn’t really take a break in our training. We had a pretty back workout on Monday,” coach Leibfried said. “Tomorrow we’ll probably do a longer run and kind of work into next week. 

“That’s going to be the center of the state course and we’re looking forward to [the next meet] to kind of see how we’re going to do and how we’re goingt to stack up against a lot of good teams out there. We’re going to try to be ready for that one and give it a whirl.”