Bridgman Completes Climb to 1st Title
December 18, 2019
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
Bridgman girls cross country coach Spencer Carr couldn’t recall his team having a bad meet this fall. And there were a couple of especially good showings that seemed to forecast the Bees’ historic season-ending finish.
On Sept. 21, Bridgman traveled to New Prairie, Ind., and won the Varsity A race against schools twice its enrollment of roughly 250 students. Two weeks later, the Bees finished second in the Division 4 race at the prestigious Portage Invitational, just a point off the lead.
And in both races, their top runner placed sixth individually, another coincidental sign of how the team would win its first MHSAA Finals championship in girls cross country Nov. 6 at Michigan International Speedway.
With junior Karsyn Stewart leading the way with a sixth-place individual finish, Bridgman scored 132 points to outpace four-time reigning champion Mount Pleasant Sacred Heart and lock up the title – and the honor as MHSAA/Applebee’s “Team of the Month” for November.
“Coming into the season, I had hopes of a top-10 finish, maybe top five if everything progressed well,” Carr said. “I never really looked at who was a contender at the top of Division 4 until we started to place high at some big meets. We knew Mount Pleasant Sacred Heart was good and had won state the year before, but it wasn't until part way through the year that I noticed they had won it the last four years.
“We talked about the challenge of beating a team like that, one with experience that always seemed to run well in the big meets. We knew it was going to be very tough to beat them because they knew how to win in the big meets, and we were pretty new to being towards the top. The girls realized early on that they could only control how they ran. If they did everything they could do to run their best race, then that would put us in a pretty good position.”
That mindset paid off well. At the Regional, Bridgman scored just 35 points placing four among the top 10 and five among the top 13. At the Final, Stewart was followed by sophomore Arie Hackett in 11th, freshman Summer Fast in 39th, sophomore Jane Kaspar in 68th and senior Mikaela Owen in 81st.
Stewart had led the way as well in 2018, when Bridgman finished 15th as a team and she finished 24th individually. She was 35th as a freshman in 2017 as the team also finished 15th – setting an early foundation for this rise to the top.
Before this fall, the Bees’ best Finals finish was fifth in Class D in 1985. They didn’t qualify as a team for the championship races again until 2015, when they finished 24th in Division 3.
Longtime coach John Wismer had built a strong boys program (Division 4 runner-up finishes in 2009 and 2010) and helped put the girls team in position before retiring after the 2016 season. Kurt Hanke led the Bees in taking the next steps in 2017 before Carr – previously the boys cross country coach at Hartford from 2010-16 – took over both Bridgman programs the following summer. He credited both predecessors for helping the Bees build toward their first title.
But this fall did have some early unpredictability. Bridgman had graduated three of its top five from the 2018 Finals lineup, including its second and third-highest placers. Carr knew he had Stewart and lone senior Owen, but other pieces had to fall into place as well.
Carr knew Kaspar had lots of potential, and that Fast had been successful in middle school. Bridgman got a major boost from Hackett, also a basketball and softball player who hadn’t run as a freshman.
They came together to win all of their races this fall but two – at Portage and against a field of much larger schools at the Kalamazoo Christian Invitational, where the Bees finished second to Grand Rapids South Christian (which went on to place 19th at the Division 2 Final). Bridgman also won its Berrien-Cass-St. Joseph Conference title and posted a perfect score of 15 at the River Valley Mustang Invitational.
Bridgman expects to return six of its top seven runners next year; sophomore Grace Fenech and junior Alexa Ackerman followed Owen in the Finals lineup. But Sacred Heart should be back in Division 4 contention, along with third-place finisher Kalamazoo Christian – which edged the Bees at Portage. And there always could be another Bridgman-type team preparing to make a big jump – so the Bees know what they face to stay on top.
“We lost a bunch of seniors last year who really were the start of really getting the girls program going, so I wasn't really sure how good we could be,” Carr said. “I knew we had Karsyn Stewart, who was all-state the year before, and Mikaela Owen, our only senior and a great leader, but I wasn't too sure after that.
“They all came together over the summer and put in the work, and it translated into a great season.”
Past Teams of the Month, 2019-20
October: Allegan boys tennis - Report
September: Ishpeming Westwood girls tennis - Report
PHOTOS: (Top) Bridgman’s girls cross country team poses with its first MHSAA Finals championship trophy during the awards ceremony at Michigan International Speedway. (Middle) Arie Hackett (1699) works to keep a step ahead of Sacred Heart’s Olivia Ervin. (Photos by Dave McCauley/RunMichigan.com.)
Freshman Setting Pace as St. Joseph Finds Footing Among State's Best
By
Wes Morgan
Special for MHSAA.com
October 12, 2021
If this fall marked the starting line for St. Joseph freshman Elena Figueroa, it’s sure to be an exciting finish for the budding talent as she progresses over the next three cross country seasons.
Having already claimed titles at a pair of Southwestern Michigan Athletic Conference West division meets, a victory at the Berrien County Invitational, wins in the underclassmen races at the Harper Creek Optimist Club Invitational and St. Joseph Invitational — which included times that would have placed her first and second, respectively, among the upperclassmen — and a runner-up performance at the Lakeview Invite, Figueroa leads a Bears program looking to have a strong kick as the year winds down.
“I started getting more serious last track season and started training more,” Figueroa explained. “I’ve been training since the summer, and I’ve been doing more weights and working on my strength.”
“She’s having a really solid and strong season,” veteran St. Joseph coach Mike Mahler added. “Coming into this season I knew she’d be on our varsity along with a lot of other strong runners this year, but I had no idea she’d end up being our No. 1 runner. That was a little surprising for me.”
St. Joseph competes at the Rock ‘N Run Invitational on Thursday in Dowagiac before closing out the schedule with the SMAC Championship on Oct. 23 and Lower Peninsula Division 1 Regional meet on Oct. 29 with a chance to earn spots in the Nov. 6 Finals at Michigan International Speedway. The Bears are ranked No. 14 this week in LPD1.
Along with Figueroa, seniors Riley Mullen and Jillian Tunnicliff, sophomores Grace Kelley and Cecilia Ruchti, and junior Olivia Ippel have helped fuel St. Joseph’s success this season. And though she isn’t officially part of the team, sophomore Gail Vaikutis, a transfer from Illinois who will be eligible next season, has played a critical role this year.
“She probably would be our No. 1 runner,” Mahler said of Vaikutis. “Gail is full of energy and very team-oriented and really pushing the girls in workouts. Gail and Elena have been able to train together every day. I have six girls that could be our No. 1 runner at any given point.”
But someone had to claim that spot, and Figueroa emerged as the pace setter for the Bears, setting up what will be an exciting partnership on the course with Vaikutis in years to come.
“She’s probably faster than me, and she’s been pushing me a lot at practice,” Figueroa said of Vaikutis. “Next year you will see her. We have so much talent on this team.”
Shy and humble, Figueroa is learning to deal with the newfound attention she’s getting, as well as how to navigate larger races like the ones rapidly approaching.
“Probably the only thing we need to work on is she gets really nervous when we go to a course she hasn’t run before,” Mahler said. “We just have to make sure we have plenty of time before the race to go over the course, and just keeping those nerves under control.”
At the ultra-competitive Ottawa Hills Invite, the freshman finished fifth overall in 18 minutes, 52.34 seconds. At the prestigious Portage Invitational, and while not feeling up to par, Figueroa was 34th overall in the Division 1 race. But with multiple sub-19-minute finishes already under her belt, she’s hoping to keep up with the top half of the field come Finals time.
“It was a lot of good competition (at Portage),” Figueroa said. “It was really big. I really got to see the competition and talent that is around me and the faces that I need to try to keep up with next time.”
“It’s just a great group of kids, and I’m thrilled for Elena having a super solid season,” Mahler said. “She’s coachable, she works hard, asks a lot of questions about workouts and it is exciting. I’m just so happy for the season she’s having so far, and hopefully we’ll see more improvement over the next few weeks.”
Wes Morgan has reported for the Kalamazoo Gazette, ESPN and ESPNChicago.com, 247Sports and Blue & Gold Illustrated over the last 12 years and is the publisher of JoeInsider.com. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Berrien, Cass, St. Joseph and Branch counties.
PHOTOS (Top) St. Joseph’s Elena Figueroa has won five of her nine races this season. (Middle) Figueroa (1160) leads the field during the Oct. 2 Berrien County Invitational. (Photos courtesy of the St. Joseph cross country program.)