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August 29, 2007

Blain leads East girls to opening win

Overcomes untied shoe to lead runners

By Jim Rueda

MANKATO — Minutes after winning the individual championship of Mankato East’s season-opening girls cross country meet, sophomore Amanda Blain looked at her mother and pointed to her own right foot. Blain’s shoelace was untied yet she still managed to post a first-place time of 16:28 over the 4,000-meter course at Land of Memories Park.

“I noticed it about halfway through the race,” Blain said. “I tried not to think about it. It turns out it didn’t affect me at all.”

Blain ran with the lead pack for most of Wednesday’s race but pulled away along with Belle Plaine’s Holly Trost with about half a mile to go.

“We went back and forth for awhile,” Blain said. “I never really looked behind me but, on some of the turns, you can kind of see where people are at. I took the lead before that last turn and was able to close it out.”

Blain was one of five East runners to finish in the top six. Trost was second in 16:33 and was followed by Sara Lundgren (16:40), Steph Anderson (16:43), Jessie Fowler (16:55) and Emily Ludwig (17:05).

East ended up winning the team title with 19 points. Belle Plaine was second with 53, while Minnesota Valley Lutheran, New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva and Martin Luther were all incomplete.

“I thought it went pretty well for us today,” East coach Neil Paarmann said afterward. “We were very aggressive at the mile mark and that was encouraging. We had a time trial the other day and I thought the first mile was kind of slow so I asked them to pick it up in this race.”

Paarmann said his top five finishers were the ones he expected to be there near the end.

“We did some nice pack running today and that’s good,” he said. “Our times are going to come down, I know they will. We just have to keep working hard.”

Blain said her goal this year to get her time down into the low-to-mid 15-minute range. Her other goal is simply to finish the section meet.

“I had pneumonia during last year’s section race,” she said. “I started but I didn’t finish. This year I just want to make it to the end.”

Trost was followed on the Belle Plaine team by Ellen Schneider (8th, 17:40), Cassie Fink (10th, 18:03), Erika Schneider (16th, 19:23) and Megan Millmann (22nd, 19:50).

East is back in action Thursday, Sept. 6, at the Hayfield Invitational.

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