Performance: Negaunee's Emily Paupore
October 3, 2019
Emily Paupore
Negaunee senior – Cross Country
After an illness forced Paupore to miss a week of school and training – and threatened the rest of her season – the two-time reigning Upper Peninsula Division 1 champion returned to competition and set a Tracy Strom Invitational record of 19:29.2 at Al Quaal Recreation Area, earning the MHSAA “Performance of the Week.”
Paupore cleared the field by 2:04 and cut seven seconds off her winning time from 2018 at the hilly Ishpeming-area course. She has won all but two races over the last two seasons – her only non-victories were in the “Elite” race at the Spartan Invitational at Michigan State University, where she finished 23rd this fall and 30th a year ago running against many of the Lower Peninsula’s best. Paupore will test herself against downstate competition again this weekend at the prestigious Portage Invitational as she seeks to push toward a personal record in the mid-18s. She has dropped her PR nearly nine seconds already this season, to an 18:48.8 she ran at the Marquette County Meet on Sept. 5. Paupore also dominates on the track – she’s won the 800, 1,600 and 3,200 meters at the Upper Peninsula Division 1 Finals the last two seasons after finishing second in all three races as a freshman, with her 3,200 time in 2018 (11:25.52) the meet record.
Running certainly runs in her family. Paupore’s mother Vickie (Leathers) Paupore ran collegiately at Lawrence University in Wisconsin and is Negaunee’s girls track & field coach, and Emily’s father Mark Paupore has run half and full marathons. Emily Paupore also played basketball her first three years of high school but instead will run indoor track this winter. She’s unsure where she’ll continue after graduation in the spring – but she’ll have options. Paupore also carries a 4.222 grade-point average and is interested in studying elementary education or pediatrics.
Coach Lisa Bigalk said: “She's one in a million, one in a career. I’m very honored to be her coach. She is very dedicated, very enthusiastic and positive, and I think she really loves running and wants to become the best runner she can be. At times, it's pretty amazing, I've had to hold her back. That doesn't happen real often with high school athletics. ... Besides being a great role model and leader for our team, she's really looked up to by other high school and middle school runners in the whole U.P. I’ve heard coaches, parents other athletes say she’s very respected and is a great role model.”
Performance Point: “I was really sick, so I really wasn't sure what was going to happen that day. And it's a really challenging course, so I knew it was going to be a hard day for me,” Paupore said. “So I just went out and did what I could. … We weren't sure what sickness I had. We kinda thought I had mono(nucleosis) for a while, so they didn't want me running on it. It was a challenge, and just having that thought go through my mind that I wasn't going to be able to run the rest of the season and I wasn't going to be able to finish my senior year – I guess I take it for granted sometimes. But it made me realize how lucky I am to be able to run and use my gifts.”
It’s been a great high school run: “I just think every year, (I’ve been) trying to get better and faster, just to improve. And on improving myself instead of focusing on who I'm racing against, my competition – I think every year I've gotten better at that. And I'm a more confident runner, so I think I'm proud of that. … I've had a lot of fun running in the U.P. A lot of times it's a different kind of challenge because you don't always have that constant competition as you would downstate, but just getting to run -- I know everyone I'm racing against, and they're like my family.”
Road trip: “This past summer I met a lot of girls who run downstate and who are really good downstate. So I got to run with them, and just getting to compete against them a little bit … and run against better competition, girls who are going to be in front of me and much faster and having girls all around you all the time, it really pushes you harder. I can get pushed up here, but it's really fun getting to run downstate. I love it. … I think (downstate) they're kinda like, 'Who are you?' And I tell them I'm from the U.P., and they’re like, 'Oh, really?'”
Cheering us on: “I know a bunch of people who have run in the U.P., and we just get so much support from all of our communities. I think that's one cool thing about running in the U.P.: The whole community is always behind you and always supporting you. It's really everywhere we go. It doesn't matter if it’s your rival school or anything; they’re always supporting us, and I think it's a really special thing.”
Those before me, and after: “Obviously a runner in the U.P. like Lindsey Rudden (Marquette grad 2016/now runs at Michigan State), she did a lot of cool things up here. So I definitely respect her, and Colton (Yesney, Negaunee grad 2018/now runs at University of Michigan). Past runners in the U.P. have done well for themselves, I think. I'm hoping I can show (younger runners) that you can still be a good runner in the U.P. and show people what U.P. kids are made of. You can still do it just as well, and we have a little bit of extra fight.”
– Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
Past honorees
Sept. 26: Josh Mason, South Lyon soccer - Report
Sept. 19: Ariel Chang, Utica Eisenhower golf - Report
Sept. 12: Jordyn Shipps, DeWitt swimming - Report
PHOTOS: (Top) Negaunee's Emily Paupore leads the pack at the Tracy Strom Invitational on Saturday. (Middle) Paupore pushes uphill at the Ishepming-area course. (Photos by Cara Kamps.)
Freeland Girls Realizing Fast-Pace Potential
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
August 14, 2019
Runners on the Freeland girls cross country team had no idea how good they could be a year ago, mainly because most of them were entering their first year in the program.
Two of the Falcons’ newly formed top seven – Kiera and Peyton Hansen – had just moved into the district from Ogemaw Heights. Three others – Whitney Farrell, Allyson Harvey and Mara Longenecker – were freshmen.
“Everyone was kind of new,” said Peyton Hansen, who is now entering her senior year. “My sister and I were new, and there were a lot of incoming freshmen, so it was a blank slate, and that made it easier for us all to get along and work together. That’s what kick-started us to performing very well. You’re not going to want to train and run with people every day if you don’t like them.”
The Falcons got to know each other and got to know their immense talent throughout the season, winning a Regional title and finishing 15th at the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 2 Finals. Now six of the top seven are back, and hopes are high for the upcoming season.
“I think it was Regionals, because we weren’t really supposed to win that, but we did and that’s when we realized we could really be good,” sophomore Mara Longenecker said. “Before then, we didn’t really realize it. I think we can definitely go to states again as a team, and hopefully place in the top 10 this year.”
As far as preseason proclamations go, Longenecker’s is fairly mild considering what she and her teammates already have done and what they bring back.
With a tough conference season ahead – Tri-Valley Conference rival Frankenmuth also qualified for the Finals a year ago and could bring back six of its top seven racers – and a region that features Frankenmuth, Corunna and Flint Powers Catholic, nothing is guaranteed. But the numbers are in their favor.
Kiera Hansen was an all-state performer, Saginaw County and Regional champion as a freshman, clocking in with a personal best of 18 minutes, 32.7 seconds. Farrell and Peyton Hansen each were sub-20 runners last year, while Harvey (20:07.9), juniors Caitlyn Mieske (21:10.8) and Longenecker (21:12.7) weren’t far behind.
Of the 14 teams that finished ahead of Freeland at the 2018 Finals, only four (champion East Grand Rapids, Petoskey, St. Johns and Cadillac) are expected to return six of their top seven runners.
Only one other school in the top 15 (Otsego, which placed ninth with two seniors leading the way) had four freshmen in the lineup at the Finals.
“I think that we gained a lot of experience,” Farrell said. “We all didn’t run our best times at that race, but now we know the course and it can be a bit more familiar. There was a ton of people; it was really crazy.”
But modesty is something coach George Drown said runs throughout the team, whether that’s in setting individual goals, team goals or even applying to be one of the team’s captains this season.
“I don’t know if it’s that they don’t want the pressure, so they’re not expressing they know how good they are, but I do think they’re slowly understanding that,” said Drown, who is entering his third season at Freeland. “I think they’re excited for the season and excited for the new challenges we face with a different conference. We go from the team that was the darkhorse in the Regional to the team that has a target on their back.”
While the girls on the team said they didn’t see the success coming prior to last year, Drown did. His wife is the middle school coach in Freeland, giving him extra insight into the upcoming talent. And even though he’s fairly new to Freeland, he spent the previous 10 years coaching in nearby Hemlock.
“I think we did see it coming up,” Drown said. “Did we think they were going to be as good as they were their freshman year? No. But they bought in. We train to make the team good. We did a lot of group runs, and we had times with Kiera and Whitney where we knew they could run faster, but we held them back, and we used our top two girls to elevate our three through six and really pull them through the longer workouts. They bought in, and that’s how we did it. We really focused on the thought the team is only as good as the sum of its parts.”
Drown said his team is capable of stretching well beyond the top seven this season when it comes to being competitive at the varsity level, predicting he has 14 girls who are capable of running a 5K in less than 22 minutes.
So while the hopes are high and the season figures to be competitive, perhaps the modesty at the top of the lineup comes from knowing no breaks can be taken, even in practice.
“It’s really good for me, because I have people to base off of how fast I should be going,” said Longenecker, who joins Mieske as a team captain. “I’m never by myself on a run. I don’t want to say it’s a competition, but it really is at practice. You don’t want to finish last.”
Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Freeland’s Allyson Harvey, right, and Peyton Hansen pace a pack around a bend during a race last season. (Middle) Whitney Farrell, left, and Kiera Hansen also were among Freeland’s top runners in 2018. (Photos courtesy of the Freeland girls cross country program.)