Mid Pen Champs: Like Mom, Like Daughter
October 31, 2017
By Dennis Grall
Special for Second Half
ESCANABA – Daisy Englund had a couple of very reachable goals when she began this fall’s Upper Peninsula cross country championship race.
The Rock Mid Peninsula freshman wanted to finish ahead of her running partner and teammate Landry Koski and get into the top 15 placers to earn all-state laurels.
Not only did she reach those goals, she also joined her mother as a U.P. champion.
Englund won the Division 3 girls championship Oct. 21 at Pictured Rocks Golf Course near Munising, finishing in a season-best 20 minutes, 31.3 seconds. Koski, an eighth-grader at Mid Pen, finished fifth in 20:55.1 as they helped the Wolverines claim runner-up team honors at the Finals.
Chassell took the team trophy for the third time in the past four years, with 40 points. Mid Pen edged Munising 72-74 for second place.
Daisy's mother, the former Faye Peterson, won U.P. Class D titles in 1994, 1995 and 1996. Her 1995 team won the Upper Peninsula championship. Faye’s best time of 19:59 came as a freshman at the U.P. Finals at Presque Isle in Marquette.
That title team was coached by Duane Englund, whose son Ken is married to Faye. Daisy's sister, Kennedy, a sophomore, finished 33rd overall at Munising two weeks ago.
Daisy Englund came from behind to claim the title, edging Munising junior Madeleine Peramaki by 6.1 seconds. Chassell junior Lela Rautiola, the 2016 champion, was third.
"I really didn't think I would win because Peramaki beat me every single meet (this season)," said Englund, who also finished seventh as an eighth grader in 2016. (Eighth graders are allowed to compete on high school teams for schools with fewer than 100 students).
Englund trailed Peramaki by a couple of seconds coming out of the final turn, then used a strong finishing kick up a gradual hill and into a stiff breeze. With about 800 yards left, Englund trailed Peramaki by about 15 yards. She trailed by perhaps 30 seconds in the earlier stages of the race, trying to set a pace that would allow her to have enough kick at the end.
"If I kicked too fast, I knew I could lose it," Englund said of biding her time down the stretch. After striding into the lead with about 40 yards remaining in the 3.1-mile race, she said, "I got scared. I knew I had to stride out and keep my head down. When my foot crossed the finish line, I knew I had her. "
The victory didn't sink in until "people started congratulating me. I thought I actually did it. It was really a big thrill."
She said getting the victory and the team runner-up finish "are both kind of cool. The team really wanted it."
Faye Englund was an intense spectator, with her own running experiences helping her understand what was happening in the stretch run. "There was a little bit of adrenalin, a lot of screaming and hugging," she said during an interview at Mid Pen High School. "Knowing all the hard work and effort she put out, it makes me realize what an accomplishment I did. It makes me feel prouder, and I didn't have to run.
"I don't think I realized how much of an achievement it was. It is completely thrilling that Daisy was able to follow in my footsteps."
Daisy said she had a game plan for the race of trying to keep close to the leaders. "I was just running, I wasn't thinking. I was tired, but the faster I ran I didn't get so tired," she recalled during that recent interview with her parents at Mid Pen.
She had been nursing a sprained ankle prior to the Finals. "I didn't think about it, but when I had to sprint at the end I noticed it more," she said.
Faye Englund remembers her parents encouraging her to participate in athletics.
"They were my biggest cheerleaders. Many nights I didn't want to go for a run; all those fears would come back. But without fears, you never take the chance," she said.
The Englund sisters lift weights and run frequently, with speed workouts part of the plan.
"We are there helping those kids do everything they want to do. We are their biggest cheerleaders, but we tell them if they do something they have to finish it out," Faye said of the support she and Ken provide.
Daisy and Kennedy also play basketball and run track for the Wolverines, and there is a definite sibling rivalry. "We are always competitive. It helps us because we can push each other, and we strive to win," said Daisy. "We can look up to (our parents) and say we can do the same things they did."
Ken Englund added: "They don't let any grass grow under their feet. When they do something, they do it all out."
Denny Grall retired in 2012 after 39 years at the Escanaba Daily Press and four at the Green Bay Press-Gazette, plus 15 months for WLST radio in Escanaba; he served as the Daily Press sports editor from 1970-80 and again from 1984-2012. Grall was inducted into the Upper Peninsula Sports Hall of Fame in 2002 and serves as its executive secretary. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for the Upper Peninsula.
PHOTOS: (Top) Daisy Englund, left, followed her mother Faye as a U.P. champion earlier this month. (Middle) Faye Peterson won three straight Finals titles for Rock Mid Peninsula from 1994-96. (Below) Englund (345) kept pace with the pack early before breaking out with the leaders Oct 21. (Top photo by Dennis Grall, middle courtesy of the Englund family and below photo by Cara Kamps.)
Lending some hands for 'Family'
March 30, 2012
Adrian senior Zach Sarrault had never seen, on the ground in front of him, the damage caused by a tornado.
Living only 40 miles from where a storm had torn through Dexter on March 15, he was close enough to get an idea of what had ripped through the home of one of the Maples’ Southeastern Conference rivals.
And that distance was little more than an afterthought in deciding to help out a member of the “track family.”
The tornado that day was driven by wins of up to 140 miles per hour, according to the National Weather Service, and media reports said the storm damaged 100 homes and destroyed 10. One of those belonged to Dexter girls cross country coaches Katie and Bob Jazwinski – who with their children survived the storm in a bedroom closet.
“We knew we needed to go up there and help,” Sarrault said.
“I was really shocked by what it did. To see the roofs and blown-off siding. And the Dexter coaches’ house wasn’t even there anymore.”
Adrian coach Leo Lauver, his assistant coach and assistant coach’s wife and 21 members of their team – basically all who weren’t part of the school’s band and orchestra concerts that day – loaded into a bus and spent most of the daylight hours March 24 helping not only the Jazwinskis, but their neighbors as well.
A number of schools and teams have been represented in the Dexter clean-up efforts. Jazwinski said he’s seen athletes and coaches from Ann Arbor Pioneer, Pinckney, Chelsea, Ann Arbor Skyline, Whitmore Lake and the USA junior hockey team also based in Ann Arbor.
All have been appreciated. And most of that group had some kind of previous relationship with Dexter, or the Jazwinskis in particular.
But they’d known Adrian’s track people mostly through competition, and that was about it.
“My wife and I thought we were out of tears, but once we saw the Adrian bus pull up to our demolished house, we had tears flowing again, this time tears of joy and happiness,” the Jazwinskis wrote in a letter to Adrian superintendent Chris Timmis. “They have touched our lives for eternity.”
Lauver described the work as “cut down, cut down, cut down. Move, move, move.” Bob Jazwinski said his neighborhood isn’t one where people buy in as much for the houses as for the landscape – which included a number of mature trees including century-old oaks and 50-foot tall pines.
The tornado cleared many of those like it was building a golf course.
“It was a no-brainer,” said Lauver, in his 28th season coaching the Maples. “Adrian is a blue-collar town. It’s the right thing. You don’t think about it. You go help. That’s what we do here. … We’re a family, and Dexter is part of that family.”
Lauver first introduced the idea to his team the Monday after the storm. The athletes bought in immediately.
Thorns resulted in a few scratches, and the work was hard. But the Salvation Army donated gloves, and a local catering company was among those who fed the volunteers – who Bob Jazwinski had to order to eat because they were working so hard.
One of his neighbors, a Dexter cross country mom, had been in tears over all the debris scattered around her yard. The Maples cleaned up all of it, and now she calls Jazwinski just about daily to send along her thanks.
“They were very grateful. Everybody out there,” Sarrault said. “A Pioneer coach had a house there too, and I remember him telling us he’d never been so grateful to see an Adrian bus roll up.
“It really brought us together as a team, knowing we can help out other people. It will probably bring us into doing more volunteering.”
The family has received additional offers of help, including from the men’s gymnastics team from the University of Michigan – where Katie was a five-time All-American in cross country and track.
Bob Jazwinski said he and his family will move out of a hotel Wednesday. They’re working through preliminary steps at this point. But when it’s time to rebuild, Lauver – who has a background in landscaping – pledged the Maples for a return trip.
“The support of people who know us is pretty spectacular,” Bob Jazwinski said. “But to see a group of athletes from another team, that’s competitive (with us), drop everything, all the competitiveness is gone, and just want to help somebody, for us, is overwhelming.
“We’ll always be friends now, for sure.”
PHOTOS: (Top and Bottom) Adrian boys track and field athletes assist in clean of blown-down trees. (Inset) Bob and Katie Jazwinski's home was detroyed by the tornado that tore through their Dexter neighborhood March 15.(Middle) An Mlive.com report explained the damage and Jazwinskis' survival. (Photos courtesy of the Jazwinski family.)
