MONROE — Darlington freshman Raquel Reuter is the only Redbird to qualify for the WIAA Division 3 state race. She’ll be joined by Albany runners Ava Ahnen, also a freshman, and sophomore Mckenna Broughton.
“Raquel just impressed me so much,” Darlington coach Arnie Miehe said. “She ran like an experienced senior. I can’t remember having a freshman run with as much confidence as she does.”
Reuter finished fifth overall at the Darlington Sectional, held Oct. 23. Her time of 20:22.4 was just 23 seconds off the pace of race champion Brynlee Nelson of Fennimore.
Raquel joins her brother, Rhett, at the state meet. Running with speed is in their blood, too, Miehe said.
“Their mother, Lisa, was a state champion in the 4x100 in track and field. She was a very good runner,” Miehe said.
The program has been lucky with generational talent coming from a variety of families. Miehe’s own sons stood out in the past decade, and other families like the Meisters and Thompsons have also been represented well. Judith Miester, a Darlington junior, finished eight spots out from a state berth this year. The Thompson family has brothers Michael and Ethan running in the state race as well.
“We’ve been fortunate that way,” Miehe said.
Albany, meanwhile, has seen its girls program show lots of promise over the past few years. Led by Ahnen and Broughton this year, the Comets missed out on a team trip to state by tiebreaker.
“Saturday was a little bittersweet,” Albany coach Tony Brewer said. “We were all super happy for Ava and Mckenna, but heartbroken as a team.”
The Comets battled injuries this season, with Ahnen struggling with a leg injury down the stretch, and typical No. 3 and 4 runners Linsey Mueller and Payton Wachholz hampered with injuries themselves. Despite all of that, Albany was still 17.1 seconds away from reaching state as a team despite running varsity with two freshmen, two sophomores and three juniors. In fact, there isn’t a single senior on the team.
“We’ve been saying for a while that we have a young and talented team. But Kaiya Zurfluh said it perfectly after the race, we’re running out of ‘next year’s,’” Brewer said. “It’s a little bit up to these two for motivation for the team.”
The team is still planning to take as many members up as they can to watch Ahnen and Broughton run in their first state meet.
“We turn our attention to those two. They both had a great season,” Brewer said, adding that in practice the two are trying to stay sharp, but also rest up and get healthy. “Ava is resting as much as possible, and Mckenna is healthy. I think that as of right now, we’re going to keep (practice) as normal as possible.”
Reuter will run in the earliest time slot of the day at 9:30 a.m., while Broughton and Ahnen take to the course at 3:30 p.m. Each race of individual qualifiers will have just 10 runners, and knowing the final results will have to wait until about 4 p.m. at the earliest.
“It’s still going to be about your time. It could come down to a half-a-second for them,” Brewer said.
