Girls Cross Country

While the best part of a cross country or track race is the sprint to the finish line, it was actually having the race be over that excited Audrey DaDamio the most. Growing up, DaDamio loved watching older sister Rachel, who finished second at the 2014 Lower Peninsula ...

An illness forced Negaunee senior Emily Paupore to miss a week of school and training – and threatened the rest of her season. But the two-time reigning Upper Peninsula Division 1 champion returned to competition Saturday and set a Tracy Strom Invitational record...

Runners on the Freeland girls cross country team had no idea how good they could be a year ago, mainly because most of them were entering their first year in the program. Two of the Falcons’ newly formed top seven – Kiera and Peyton Hansen – had just ...

High fives, music and a hallway full of students gave the Bloomingdale cross country teams an enthusiastic sendoff as they departed for the MHSAA Finals at Michigan International Speedway two weeks ago. The best part? The girls team already had carved out a place in th...

The crown is staying in the family. One year after Lansing Catholic’s Olivia Theis ran the fastest time ever at the MHSAA Girls Cross Country Finals, her sister assumed her vacated Lower Peninsula Division 2 title Saturday at Michigan International Speedway.

When Ericka VanderLende came out for cross country as a freshman in 2015, there was nothing that indicated Rockford was getting another one of Michigan’s all-time great runners. She had never run cross country before, and it showed.

Shepherd’s Amber Gall set the bar for Hart’s Adelyn Ackley back in middle school. It was the desire to beat Gall, whose times caught her attention, that drove Ackley to start training seriously back then.

Other states have reputations for producing great athletes in other sports, but Michigan is known for cranking out elite high school cross country runners. The latest running phenom to come out of the state is freshman Abby VanderKooi of Muskegon Western Michigan Chris...

Michigan International Speedway will showcase Saturday the last MHSAA Finals for a pair of the most successful champions all-time in this state. Hart’s Adelyn Ackley will run for her third individual championship while attempting to lead her team to a repeat in L...

Small school. Big tradition. That’s pretty much the way it is at Chassell High School, which captured both the girls and boys Upper Peninsula Division 3 cross country championships Oct 20 at Munising.

It was a historic day for Sault Ste. Marie’s cross country program Saturday as its girls team completed a sweep of the Upper Peninsula Division 1 titles 90 minutes after the boys started the championship run at Pictured Rocks Golf Course. The Sault girls, placing...

All three reigning team champions are loaded again. All three reigning individual champions are back in the field (even if two are this time running the same race). Saturday’s Upper Peninsula Girls Cross Country Finals at Pictured Rocks Golf Course in Munising ea...

After spending Saturday morning taking the SAT, Rockford's Ericka VanderLende ran the second-fastest time of the day at the prestigious Portage Invitational, besting the field by 45 seconds with a 17:33 to earn the Michigan Army National Guard “Performance of the ...

The runners on the Fenton girls and boys cross country teams admired and respected coach Jesse Anderson before he placed 20th overall at the 2018 Boston Marathon. But that performance definitely didn’t hurt his credibility.

Every year since 1993, Gull Lake’s runners have carried a game ball from their football opponent’s school to the Blue Devils’ stadium in advance of the Homecoming game. Previously, the longest trip was 72 miles from Niles. But this fall, Gull Lake&rsq...

Running fever is running rampant in Ellsworth, and it’s got quite a grip on the small Antrim County school. Despite having fewer than 100 students in their high school, the Lancers’ boys and girls cross country teams thrive on a statewide level, thanks to n...

Hanover-Horton senior Judy Rector has returned from injury to become a two-time MHSAA Finals track champion, and she’s surged into her senior cross country season pacing among the state’s elite in that sport as well.  Rector ran a personal-record 18:07...

Finally, a pleasant memory at Michigan International Speedway for Rockford junior Ericka VanderLende. Her first two trips around the cross country course at MIS were OK, but weren’t indications of the greatness that awaited her.

Of the thousands of girls who have run in the MHSAA Cross Country Finals at Michigan International Speedway, only one had ever broken the 17-minute barrier. Winning the 2009 Lower Peninsula Division 1 meet in 16:54.8 just a month before winning the national Foot Locker ...

The arrival of four girls from the same family at Hart High School resulted in a day the Pirates have never experienced in any sport. With four Ackley girls finishing in the team’s top four spots, Hart won the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 3 cross country champi...