Photo courtesy of PhotoWorks: The 2026 Marshall girls track and field team.

MARSHALL — The perennially deep Marshall track and field team is going to look to put together another successful season in 2026, albeit with some new faces at the helm. The Tigers graduated eight of their 14 individual state qualifiers from last season, but still bring back a crop of strong athletes that could go even deeper this time around.

“We’re excited about the youth and we’re excited about our older leadership, across rosters,” Marshall girls head coach Marie Sample said. “We’ve got a little bit of something everywhere. I wouldn’t say we’re overly deep in any one area … We don’t have a lot of depth as far as veterans in each area, but we do have very good people in each area.”

Taleigha Bigler is one of Marshall’s key returners on the girls side. The senior middle-distance runner finished third in last year’s 800-meter state championship race and helped a group of then-sophomores Katelyn Leibfried and Kaitlyn Soupir and then-senior Peyton Boeck to a state championship in the 4×800-meter relay. She was also a member of a relay team that set the Class AA record in the event two years ago.

Leibfried has also had her fair share of success as a distance runner across seasons for Marshall. In just her junior season, Leibfried has already earned state medals in cross country and track and field, helping the Tigers to a state cross country championship during her freshman season and most recently qualifying for the state championship in the 3200 meters, where she placed 14th with a then-personal-best time of 11:31.63.

Early on in the season, some of the goals for the Tigers are to send runners to some of the bigger regional invitationals. Sample said that Marshall is looking to get kids qualified for the Hamline, Howard Wood and Fargo Elite Meets in the upcoming week, with the Fargo meet coming up on Friday.

As for long-term goals, the Tigers are looking to just steadily decrease their times and increase their distances in order to put themselves in position to succeed in the postseason meets, Sample said.

The Tigers introduced a new throwing coach this year in Jada Becker, who hopes to help Marshall continue its recent string off success in girls throwing events. The Tigers had Paige Gillingham medal at state two of the last three years, and while she’s since graduated, Brooke Gillingham has been on the cusp of state qualification and looks to get to the next level as a senior.

“We’ve got a lot of youth over there, and [Brooke’s] been helping our youth get up and get rolling, and help Jada Becker kind of get up and rolling with Marshall track,” Sample said. She added that Bigler has also stepped up into a leadership role in terms of the girls distance runners.

On the boys side, Aidan Schuerman was a state qualifier in the 110- and 300-meter hurdles last year as a junior and returns again as a senior. Schuermann finished 10th in the 300 hurdles, and also helped the Tigers’ 4×400-meter relay to a sixth-place medal at the state meet with a time of 3:23.98.

“[Schuerman’s] really good too as far as being a good leader, leading warmups, trying to help people get up and running,” Sample said. “We have a lot of youth that need to know these things, so those three have been pretty key players so far this season.”

The Tigers have had success in the jumping events the last few years on both the girls and boys teams. Senior Autumn Deutz and freshman Brooklyn Purrington have qualified for state each of the last two seasons in the pole vault and high jump, respectively, with Deutz medaling sixth each time. The Tigers lost state-qualifier Jack Meier in the boys high jump, but senior Brady Dubs has helped step into a jumping role for the Tigers this time around.

“He’s a great leader, he’s a hard worker … and he’s been really good about helping the young kids over there learn pole vault skills,” Sample said. “There are a lot of young people over there, so we’ve got to mention Brady Dubbs because he’s been really good and we look for him to step up this year and maybe qualify for the state meet.”

Marshall’s boys lost a strong crop of seniors last season, including Alex Franson who placed fourth in the 400-meter state championships, Josh Leibfried who medaled in the 800 and Keagen Anderson who qualified for the 400. Those three seniors ran with Schuerman in the 4×400, and Leibfried also anchored the Tigers’ 4×800-meter relay runner-up finish.

Still, the Tigers return Sam Deutz — a two-season medalist as a distance runner from Marshall — as he looks to close out his decorated career with another state medal.