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.)
Performance: Hanover-Horton's Judy Rector
September 13, 2018
Judy Rector
Hanover-Horton senior – Cross Country
The Hanover-Horton senior has returned from injury to become a two-time MHSAA Finals track champion, and she’s surged into her senior cross country season pacing among the state’s elite in that sport as well. Rector ran a personal-record 18:07.7 on Saturday to win the Class 3 race at Bath’s Bret Clements Invitational and also best the winners of the event’s two larger-school races, earning her the first Michigan Army National Guard “Performance of the Week” for 2018-19.
Saturday was the second time in four races this fall that Rector lowered her personal record, and she’s now dropped 37 seconds from her fastest finish of 2017. As a sophomore, Rector began suffering from slipping rib syndrome – one of her ribs would pop out of place, causing intense pain. She was forced to take six months off from running and missed her track & field season that spring while undergoing physical therapy. She ran again for the first time on the day of the 2017 MHSAA Track & Field Finals, built back her strength for cross country last fall and finished 10th in Lower Peninsula Division 3, and then won the 800 and 1,600-meter LPD3 track championships this spring.
Rector’s winning time at Bath bested the lineups from the top-ranked teams in both LPD1 and LPD2, plus racers from five more teams ranked among the top 10 in those divisions. She’s got big goals for the rest of this senior year. She’s aiming to run 17:30, which would break the school cross country record set by 2012 graduate Lindsey Burdette, and finish top-three at this fall’s Finals and qualify for the Foot Locker national competition. Next spring, she’ll try to repeat in the 800 and 1,600 and make a run at the 3,200 as well. With only one A- scratching an otherwise perfect academic record, Rector is carrying a 3.99 grade-point average, tied for sixth in her graduating class. She’s still figuring out where, but she’s planning to study biology and continue her running career at the collegiate level.
Coach Dean Blackledge said: “We knew we had a special athlete when she was a freshman. The only one who didn't know was Judy. It took her a while to really understand she's as good as she is. A year and a half ago she was really in the dumps, the whole thing, because she couldn't run. … (But) we worked though the difficult times for her, spent an awful lot of time together, and she got it. When she did finally get through it, she just blossomed into the runner that I always thought she was going to be. She’s just tough in training and self-discipline. When you talk about a cross country runner, the main thing more than in probably any other sport is a cross country runner has to be self-disciplined. They have to get up and run five or six or 10 miles or whatever when other kids are sleeping or whatever, and they have to do that year-round almost. She’s been that kind of athlete. When we do a workout we go out on the roads sometimes to run, and they can cut corners whenever they want and the coach would never know. I don’t think Judy has ever cut a corner. … She’s just a great leader. She has humility, and it’s tough to get an athlete as good as she is that doesn’t boast about themselves. If you want to know something about Judy, you have to talk to somebody else. She won a couple of state championships in equestrian, and I didn’t know that until 2-3 weeks ago – and I’ve been her coach, been close to her, and she’s never said a word about it.”
Performance Point: “My goal going into (Bath) was actually to try to get under 18 (minutes),” Rector said. “Last year when we ran at Bath, I didn't run very well. I was really sick, so this year I wanted to put up a good time because I knew from last year that it was a good course to run. Fortunately it was a lot cooler in the morning, a lot better running weather than we had earlier that week on Wednesday. I was like, we're going to try to maintain a 5:45 split, which would put me just under 18. I have a tendency to go faster at the beginning of my races, and I thought if I tried to even-split it more that it would be better. At the 2-mile I was at 11:35, 11:40, so I knew I was running well at that point. It was just trying to finish going into the last mile. I knew where I was at time-wise, but more than anything I kept seeing my teammates, like the last mile. There were the boys and some of the JV girls – every time I saw them, it makes it easier to keep going. Your teammates are there and they're cheering you on, and they want you to do well. That picked me up a lot for the last part of the race too.”
Comeback trail: “For me, that was a really hard thing. Before I got injured, running was something I enjoyed and I was fairly good at. But when you're supposed to be going to rehab and doing all of those things, you really have to put yourself into it 110 percent. When they ask you to do things like the exercises and stuff, I was like, This is crazy. No way.’ They're like, it will help you. ... Having goals helped me because I'm a really goal-driven person. So coming out of that and not being able to run, I knew I valued it a lot more, just being able to go outside and being able to run and having the ability to do that because some people don't even have that. Having it in my head that I didn't want to take anything else for granted – every time I did a workout or went out to run, it was the best effort that I could do.”
Finding form: “Last summer was just trying to build up to where I was in the high 18s. This (spring’s) track season was huge for me and getting me the confidence that I could be running faster, not just short distance things but cross country too. Over the past year I've worked a lot on my form and a lot more on basic strength, the little things that I didn't necessarily do before. So I feel a lot more smooth when I'm running.”
Back on track: “After taking all of that time off, I started running on the day of the (track) state meet a year ago – so it would've been a full year from not being able to run to starting running, to the day I won those two championships. It was really emotional. I never would've imagined being able to do all of that in a year. ... It had always been a goal I had to maybe run and win a state championship, but that I was able to do it, in that amount of time, I was just so happy and proud.”
Future path: “(I’d like to become) a pathologist, someone who researches and studies diseases. I really like science classes. Last year I took a microbiology class that was more based on studying diseases, and we took samples of things from around our school and looked at them and ran tests on them, and I thought was super cool. If I could do something like that or in the medical field, that's a long-term goal for me.”
- Geoff Kimmerly, Second Half editor
Every week during the 2018-19 school year, Second Half and the Michigan Army National Guard will recognize a “Performance of the Week" from among the MHSAA's 750 member high schools.
The Michigan Army National Guard provides trained and ready forces in support of the National Military Strategy, and responds as needed to state, local, and regional emergencies to ensure peace, order, and public safety. The Guard adds value to our communities through continuous interaction. National Guard soldiers are part of the local community. Guardsmen typically train one weekend per month and two weeks in the summer. This training maintains readiness when needed, be it either to defend our nation's freedom or protect lives and property of Michigan citizens during a local natural disaster.
PHOTOS: (Top) Hanover-Horton's Judy Rector leads the way during a race this fall. (Middle) Rector powers down the straight-away during the Track Finals this spring. (Photos by Joe Childs and Marlissa Shepherd, respectively.)