With two words coach Heather Hindt captured the joy that the Moorhead girls track and field team feels about returning to the state scene.
"We're baaaack," Hindt said, trying to stretch the middle of the word across the gap between appearances. "There were some dry years. In order to have up years you have to have dry years and you have to rebuild. We've always been there. We've just been not quite good enough."
Not by their past standards, anyway.
In 1999 and 2001 the Spuds won state championships - the school's most recent Minnesota State High school League titles - and finished third in 2002. They also placed fifth at the 2001 true team meet.
The past two years, however, Moorhead qualified a total of one athlete - pole vaulter Sam Kouba - to state competition. That streak will end Friday night at the Class 3A true team meet in Blaine, although these Spuds are nothing like their predecessors, who boasted multiple event contenders like Jacenta Spandl, Lisa Dyer, Liza Conteh and Kai Gonsorowski. Kouba comes closest. The school record holder since eighth grade, she's won every meet except two this season, her personal best of 10 feet, 7 inches ranks fifth in Class 2A and she has committed to vault at North Dakota State.
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Individually, five of Moorhead's 12 seniors will run in college. Collectively, the Spuds aren't ranked in the final true team top-10 - even though only nine teams qualified for the state meet.
"This is what I refer to as a blue- collar team," Kouba said. "We don't have a lot of all-stars that win three events. We've got girls that work hard and they'll improve - if only a little bit - every meet."
This meet will be unlike any other for most of the team. Only Kouba and middle-distance runner Anna Valan have competed in a state event.
"You walk into this track - it's huge and it gets your adrenaline pumping," Kouba said. "You have to keep your head in it and not let it overwhelm you too bad. You've run or jumped or thrown a million times. Relax, don't start freaking out because it's a big meet."
Moorhead makes return to track scene
West Central Area's Kasey Maier recorded a double eagle on the 415-yard, par-5 seventh hole Monday at Birchwood Golf Course in Pelican Rapids during a Heart O' Lakes Conference girls golf tournament. Maier shot a 36 to win the event by six strokes. ... Three-time section champion Shad Tappe of Detroit Lakes is one of 13 wrestlers to make verbal commitments to Concordia College, according to coach Clay Nagel. Other Minnesota recruits are West Central Area's Denis Sik, Nels Anderson of Cokato, Mike Christensen and Jeremy Welter of Buffalo, John Fradette of Milaca, Cayle Halberg of Shevlin, Nate Stumpf of Wabasha-Kellogg, Spencer Lund of Atwater-Cosmos-Grove City, Nate Kotcher of Eastview and Tony Neumann of Willmar, plus Brandon Carrigan of Bismarck Century and Preston Lyles of Billings, Mont.
Readers can reach Terry Vandrovec at (701) 241-5548 or tvandrovec@forumcomm.com
