Saints 4×8 claim second-ever relay victory

By Kristi Nixon

DES MOINES — For only the second time in St. Ansgar school history, the Saints took home a relay state title when they ran to the 4×800 victory on Thursday afternoon, May 16 at Drake Stadium in Des Moines.

Amelia Porisch, Lila Powers, Natalie Bork and Kinsey Anderson ran to a season-best time of 9 minutes, 45.06 seconds, falling just shy of the school record in the event.

“It doesn’t feel real, honestly,” lead-off runner Amelia Porisch said. “I feel really accomplished, A lot of our work together paid off.”

Lila Powers added, “I guess I had an idea we could come in here and compete and do well, but I didn’t know we were going to come out on top, so it just feels amazing. Like she (Amelia) said, it feels like our hard work has paid off. It feels so great.”

The Saints ran to a season-best 9 minutes, 45.05 seconds to win it by a little more than two seconds over last year’s state runner-up in the event, AGWSR.

“I’m just really proud of these girls,” said senior third leg Natalie Bork, who gave the Saints a sizable lead heading into the anchor. “(I’m glad) to get to run with them and I’m going to miss them so much. It hasn’t sunk in yet, for sure.”

Bork has the fastest split in the first 400 at 1:02.21, but then started to fade before handing off to Anderson for a second split of 1:27.25.

Anderson ran splits of 1:02.91 and 1:23.15 to finish it off reacting with joy as she crossed the finish line.

“We worked together for four years now and have been running the same races, pushing each other in practice,” Anderson said. “It feels amazing to compete with them.”

It was only the second Saint girls relay state championship team with the first the 2015 sprint medley relay team of of Brooke Davila, Caitlyn Juhl, Maddie Eibes and Natalie Halfman won it.

“I had no idea that was the first one,” Powers said, looking surprised that it was only the second relay team.

However, it wasn’t a school record time.

“I think that is 9:34 or 9:36,” Porisch said of the record. “That is always something we’ve hoped to get – the school record, but we’ve always kind of known that is pretty outstanding. Even though we didn’t get that, we got first and I feel super-accomplished.”

She also said that is was redemption of sorts after being very excited about their time in the first of two heats last year.

“It’s everything,” she said. “We walked away with our heads down last year and we walked away with our heads up this time.”

The Saints changed their order for this meet with Powers taking the baton with a five-second deficit. She gave the team a 10-second advantage.

“Our order is something we’ve talked about a lot the past week,” Powers said. “We changed it up at districts and I had anchored it, but our coach looked at the leading times and saw that the leading times had their fastest runners first, so we tried to put me at the beginning so that we were still in the race. That was my goal.

“I used to start us off and that was my favorite thing about starting off was I could go watch the rest of the race. I was second today and got to cheer from Nat and Kinsey. It’s just so fun because when you are done running, the race isn’t over, you still have the other two legs to run, so it’s fun to cheer each other on.”

The two seniors finished it off to give the Saints 10 team points, which is tied for fourth with three other teams after the first day.

“I’m really proud of them,” Anderson said. “We’ve been working all season for this.”

Bork added, “I just want to say that I’m going to miss these guys so much next year and being with them every day.”

The shuttle hurdle relay team of Kenzie Peterson, Brylee Wynia, Mariah Michels and Aspen Falk capped off the Class 1A session for the Saints by qualifying for the finals with the fifth-best time. It is the fourth year in a row the Saints have reached the finals in the event.

“It’s always fun every time,” said Falk, who has been a part of all four. “Still nerves every time, but good nerves. I know how to handle it. We’re all pretty experienced being down here, but this year we have a new goal to get the school record, it’s the closest we’ve been at districts, we were .2 seconds away of the school record, which is 1:08.2, so we had 1:08.4. Today we had 1:08.9.

“I’m confident we can get better than what we did today.”

The same foursome are looking for a bit of redemption after being disqualified in the final a year ago.

“I definitely think we are because we weren’t expecting to get in the finals last year and then when we did it was a big surprise for us,” Wynia said. “We were all super-excited, then it went the exact opposite way we wanted it to, so it’s definitely time for a comeback.”

Peterson added, “We’re pretty close. We run together as a team – we love each other – it’s all good. We know what we’re like and we all have faith in what we need to do.”

Michels said that running the event together again has helped.

“I think having another year helped us grow our bond a little more,” Michels said, “and so we’ve grown together and we’re better off mentally this year and know what to expect here with each other.”