Morgan Gehl finishes eighth at state cross country meet

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Les Knutson

Sports Reporter

NORTHFIELD — Running a smart, steady and evenly-paced race Saturday morning (November 5), Fulda High School eighth-grader Morgan Gehl claimed an impressive eighth-place finish at the 2016 Minnesota State Class A high school cross country meet on the campus of St. Olaf College in Northfield.

Representing the cross country pairing of Murray County Central and Fulda, Gehl earned an All-State certificate given by the State Cross Country Coaches Association to runners finishing among the Top 25. She was the first girl from all of Section 3A to enter the chute Saturday, passing three-time section champion Madison Schandelmeier, a senior from Luverne, with a blazing finishing kick at the end of the long race.

There were a total of 176 girls from all across the state, representing eight sections, who finished the 5,000-meter course which started in an open area near the college field house, looped around soccer fields, a wooded-pond area, back across the soccer fields, around a prairie-grass loop with another pond and up through the woods along a sloping tree-lined trail before finishing on a 150-meter flat stretch after scaling a steep hill.

Coming out of the woods, without 500 meters to go, Gehl was in 12th place. Her final finishing burst moved her up four places, allowing her to take a walk on the award’s stage following the race and receive a huge eighth-place medal.

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