Bagley-Fosston wins state girls track championship

In 2009 the population of St. Peter was 10,946. The community nestled along the banks of the Minnesota River in southern Minnesota also is home to Gustavus Adolphus College, a private liberal arts institution with an enrollment of 2,456 students.

About 1,283 people live in Bagley and another 1,468 call Fosston home. Collectively the two communities are about one-fourth the size of St. Peter in terms of population and, if you throw in Gustavus, St. Peter dwarfs the Bagley-Fosston cooperative.

Despite the disparity, Bagley-Fosston and St. Peter are both in the Class A ranks of the state high school track and field divisions. While St. Peter is bigger Bagley-Fosston has the reputation and the experience. The two schools locked horns at Hamline University over the weekend and when the final runner hit the finish line, the Flyers and the Saints each had 53 points and a share of the Class A state title.

Claiming third with 45 points was Breck.

For Bagley-Fosston the championship was its second in the past three years. In between was last spring’s third-place finish.

“This group of seniors has accomplished a tremendous amount,” said Bagley-Fosston coach Doug Carlson. “They have been successful all the way through their careers.”

The seniors who led B-F to the state title this weekend included Emily Julin, Alyssa Schmidt, Lynsey Bardwell and Analisa Huschle. To no one’s surprise Huschle capped her prep career with four individual championships over the weekend as she claimed the 100, 200, long jump and triple jump, the latter with a state-record leap of 39-4.5.

But even with her efforts the Flyers would not have won the title without the other three seniors and sophomore Courtney Cosca who formed the 4x200 and 4x100 relay teams.

“Emily, Courtney, Alyssa and Lynsey were seeded ninth in the 4x200 and finished eighth,” Carlson said. “In the 4x100 they were seeded eighth and finished seventh. They gave us five team points with the two relays and without those points we would have finished second and not first.

“That is the way it’s been at Bagley-Fosston,” the coach continued. “Analisa would get her points but we always had girls score in other events as well. Track is a team game and to be successful you need people to fill in the blanks. We’ve always had that and this year it was the ability of our relays to move up a spot from their seeding that was the difference.”

In the 4x200 relay Julin, Cosca, Schmidt and Bardwell placed eighth as the unit ran 1:47.85 and defeated Worthington’s quartet by more than a second.

The same foursome was seventh in the 4x100 with a time of 51.33, edging Esko for the key spot.

“When we considered possible state scoring we set it up to have Analisa compete in four events and have the other girls race in the relays,” Carlson said. “We could have done well with Analisa in the relays but we thought we could score more team points this way.

“And it worked out for us.”

Huschle entered the meet with six state championships, including three in the triple jump. The senior returned to Bagley with 10 overall state titles and another state record. She entered the season owning the state-record long jump with a leap of 19-2.25 in 2009.

“Analisa was doing the triple jump but had to get ready to run in the 100,” Carlson said. “We decided that we had time to do two triple jumps, run the 100 and come back for another triple jump. She was under pressure (because of the time) to do that second jump and she accelerated down the lane and hit it.”

The jump was preliminarily measured and she was told the distance. At the state meet, however, jumps are measured more than once and wind speed is recorded and by the time the official measurement was completed Huschle was already in the blocks awaiting the start of the 100.

When her distance was announced and the crowd was told that a new state record distance of 39-4.5 had been established, the gun sounded to begin the 100 finals.

“Analisa exploded out of the blocks and within 10 steps the race was over,” Carlson said.

“Traditionally Analisa has explosive starts but this one was extra fast. She did the same thing later Saturday in the 200 and had that race won by the first turn.”

Huschle won the 100 in a time of 12.22 and the 200 in 24.68. On Friday she claimed the long jump with a leap of 18-2.5.

Bagley-Fosston also had a representative in the boys state meet as Mark Goss finished 12th in the high jump by going 6-0. The other area athlete who was in Hamline over the weekend was Brittany Wagner of Clearbrook-Gonvick who placed 13th in the high hump by soaring 5-0.

The Class A boys golf meet begins Wednesday at Pebble Creek in Becker and four area athletes will be in the field.

Nick Liapis of Blackduck qualified for the Wednesday-Thursday competition by placing among the top five in Section 7A. Advancing out of Section 8A are Corey Beaulieu of Red Lake plus Cody Wind and Randahl Johnson of Cass Lake-Bena.

Liapis and Beaulieu will be in the same foursome and they will hit the first tee 7:48 a.m. Wednesday.

Wind will take out his driver at 7:57 a.m. and Johnson will be in the next foursome and has an 8:06 a.m. tee time.