Murnieks leads Lee’s Summit West to Missouri state cross country title
By the time the Class 4 girls cross country championship started at 9 a.m., the temperature hadn’t yet reached 40 degrees, and with the light drizzle and steady breeze, it felt even colder. Along the course traversing Oak Hills Golf Center, onlookers huddled together in their raincoats.
It was just the kind of day Ginger Murnieks wanted.
Lee’s Summit West’s senior star, who transferred in from Oregon over the summer, felt right at home with the chill and overcast skies as she cruised to the individual title with a time of 18 minutes, 35.8 seconds. When she crossed the finish line in view of Mizzou coach Mark Burns — she committed to run for the Tigers on Tuesday — there was no one within 200 yards of her. Despite the next closest competitor finishing a full 25 seconds behind, her focus never broke from the 10-plus yards in front of her as she lumbered past the finish line.
“I was really just trying to enjoy the moment,” Murnieks said, “and obviously that’s the hardest part of the race, but I was just trying to be grateful for it and remember this is everything I’ve worked for the whole year.”
After battling injuries for much of the spring and even into the fall, Murnieks, who ran the fastest girls 5K time in Missouri this year at last weekend’s sectional meet, finally felt close to 100 percent for the first time Saturday. Through the first mile, where her coach, Jesse Griffin, said Murnieks held back to conserve energy, her lead over Liberty’s Madelynn Hill was less than two seconds.
Once she’d reached the two-mile mark, it had ballooned to more than 30 seconds, and she was able to cruise over the last 1500 meters to notch Lee’s Summit West’s first girls individual state title. Blue Springs’ Tessa Valdavia overtook Hill, but she couldn’t make up any more ground, finishing second with a time of 19:00.46.
Murnieks’ performance, as it has been for the Titans for much of the year, was a catalyst for the rest of her teammates. Juniors Madisen Hulsey and Addie Mathis finished 11th and 22nd respectively, while Hailey Hardin came in 29th and McKenna Butler finished in 36th. The quintet ran away with the team competition, grabbing the second-lowest team score in the last eight years.
The title is the Titans’ sixth in school history and their first since 2011, when they completed the most dominant half decade from a big-school program with their fifth consecutive team title.
A pair of Griffin’s teams had gotten close in recent years, finishing in third place last year and second the year before. But to him, there was just something different about this one.
“I just think they’ve just matured (from last year),” Griffin said. “ ... I think they’re a lot more on the same page than we’ve had in the past couple years. They really worked for each other, instead of having several individuals kind of doing their own thing. And we saw the result today.”
Rockhurst reigns again
A year ago, Rockhurst coach Mike Dierks was admittedly disappointed when his team stumbled to a fourth-place finish at the Class 4 state championships. The Hawklets had won the team title the year before and finished as runners-up in 2015.
Dierks had built an expectation of winning within his program, and without even knowing it, his runners had taken it on, too. When the team reconvened last spring for track practice, they had a goal in mind: bringing another title back to Kansas City.
Mission accomplished. Led by a third-place finish from senior Thomas Seitzer and a fifth-place finish from junior Porter Wesley, the Hawklets reclaimed their place atop Missouri 4A cross country with a victory over St. Louis University High, Staley and Lafayette.
Seitzer, who was Rockhurt’s top finisher in fifth place last year, led after the first mile but was overtaken by eventual champion Christian Baker of Kirkwood (15:42.03) and runner-up Clayton Whitehead of Carthage. But he maintained his pace throughout the final 3,000 meters, and Wesley, who missed the last eight weeks of the season with a stress fracture, made his push in the final mile to move into fifth. Matthew Ingle, Lucas Hupke, William Reboulet and Patrick Mullen finished in 27th, 28th, 32nd and 41st to round out the Hawklets’ scoring.
“This has been something they’ve wanted since last year when they finished fourth,” Dierks said. “They were disappointed in that, and they knew they had the talent. In our program, we just hope kids keep developing, and I can’t say enough about this senior class about what they were able to accomplish by going out and grinding every day. And they did it.”
In the Class 3 boys race, Smithville placed three runners in the top-25, including an 11th place performance from senior Luke Termorshuizen en route to a third-place finish.
In Class 1, Lutheran swept both the boys and girls team titles, with Abigail Allred’s sixth-place finish pacing the girls side, while Jesse Schultz led the boys with a fourth-place finish of his own.
Oak Hills says goodbye
Saturday wasn’t just the finale for a number of high school runners’ careers. It was the end of an era in Missouri cross country, too. For 42 years, Oak Hills Golf Center has been the state championship venue for all classifications, going back to when there was only Single- and Double-A in 1976.
That run will end next year, when Gans Creek Recreation Area in southeast Columbia becomes the new host of the event. The $200,000 course, which will also host the SEC championships in 2021, is considered championship-level by almost everyone in the cross country community. It will include both a 2- and 3-kilometer track, a pavilion for athletes, a building for race coordinators and media, a 15-foot tall timing tower and a multimedia awards platform.
There’s been plenty of memories for coaches like Lee’s Summit West’s Griffin, who has been coaching cross county in Missouri since 1998. But amid all that nostalgia, he admitted it was high time for a change.
“There’s a lot of memories that are going to be left here,” Griffin said. “But I fully believe that course in Columbia is going to be a championship-level course. I think it’s going to be a benefit for our state. I’m not trying to buck tradition, and yes the venue is a big tradition, and I’ll miss that and coming here. But I’m also very excited that we’re going to have a course where they’re developing things the right way.”