Saints chasing gold

By Kristi Nixon

DES MOINES — If the Saint girls track and field team are to capture a team trophy in Class 1A, they are going to need a big boost from the 4×400-meter relay.

The same foursome of Lila Powers, Amelia Porisch, Kinsey Anderson who combined for the 4×800 state title went out and posted the fastest qualifying time in Friday’s preliminaries to put coach Phil Baldus’ team in good position.

It also meant a new school record the same quartet has set for the third time in the past year, all three coming on the Blue Oval. Powers said the team has another one in them.

“I didn’t run all the way through to Amelia,” she admitted. “I knew going into this we were hoping to get into the finals. I really do, because personally, I don’t feel like I ran as good as I could. And, just knowing that, feeling that and still how good we ran, it feels amazing. I’m just so proud of us because we all cut our time from last year, so I think now that we have qualified for the finals with the top time, I know I’m going to run harder and chasing the title.”

They came out of the first of three heats to put together a PR time of 4 minutes, 4.71 seconds almost a full second ahead of the next qualifying team, Maquoketa Valley. Most importantly, they were nearly two seconds ahead of Oakland, Riverside, which held second place in the team race after Friday’s events concluded, 22-21, with several deciding events to come Saturday.

Porisch knows where her motivation comes from to get the 4×400 title.

“A lot of it for me is just knowing it’s our last year to do this because next year we won’t have Nat and Kins,” she said. “They are graduating and we’ve run this race down here a lot and together a lot, so kind of having that in the back of our mind, it kind of just motivates me a lot.”

When Anderson got the baton, it was a close race and the senior could see that the second-place team in the section was trying to close in on her.

“It is kind of nice to have that jumbo-tron when you’re in the lead,” Anderson said, “but it’s the 400 and you don’t have much time to think about that. You just have to give it your all. There is not much you can do. You can’t control other’s runs.”

Bork’s split was under a minute and she is poised to anchor the team to victory after running the maximum events all four years for the Saints.

“It’s definitely (the goal) to come out on top,” she said. “I think I want to come out on top. I want to do it not only for myself, but for the team and for the school. I’m so thankful to get to run in a St. Ansgar jersey all of these years.”

In order to get to that position, the distance medley crew of Josie Juhl, Hannah Clevenger, Bork and Powers had to overachieve. They came out of the second heat to finish fourth in the event after qualifying as the ninth seed. Both Bork and Powers had a bit of ground to make up in order to win the heat and set up their place.

“I knew that I needed to get a good start,” Juhl said. “Push and finish my race and get the baton to Hannah, so she could get it to Natalie and Lila could finish it. I think I did my job well.”

Clevenger added, “I felt good, I thought our hand-offs were good. We’ve done it before. It’s good to have one last one with her.”

Also scoring key points was sophomore discus thrower Lindsay Kruse, who came in as the top seed, but didn’t have a PR while the top finisher set a PR.

“I’m pretty excited to be top-three, obviously,” Kruse said. “I came in seeded first. Our district didn’t have anybody ranked and that helped me a lot. Hopefully, be a state champion in the future, but I’ll take third place for now.”