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Relay titles to Marquette Senior High School: Negaunee, Marquette duos top finishers at last cross country event before Upper Peninsula Finals

Boys and girls cross country runners from Marquette, Negaunee, Ishpeming, Westwood and Gwinn take off to start the Marquette County Relays at the Al Quaal Recreation Area in Ishpeming on Monday afternoon. (Journal photo by Corey Kelly)

“If you look at a corner, you can see out of the corner of your eye the rest of the competition and it definitely makes it a mind game.” — Garrett Zueger, junior, Marquette boys cross country

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ISHPEMING — Negaunee’s Emily Paupore and Clara Johnson were the class of the girls’ field once again while Marquette was led by the duos of Delaney Sall and Ericka Asmus and Garrett Zueger and Luke Rambo as the Redmen and Redettes took both team titles at the Marquette County Relays held at the Al Quaal Recreation Area in Ishpeming on Monday.

Marquette finished with 11 points in the boys meet, followed by Ishpeming with 15, Negaunee 26 and Westwood 52.

The Marquette girls finished with 10 points, followed by Negaunee with 18, Ishpeming 29 and Westwood 30.

The meet, which in the past has taken place at Marquette Senior High School, was moved this year due to ongoing construction of the new MSHS auxiliary gym.

As usual, though, the course for this meet was set up at one mile long as each duo alternated until they ran six laps total.

Marquette head coach Kyle Detmers said he was pleased with his team’s performance in the final meet before the Upper Peninsula Finals to be held this weekend in Munising.

“Our team did really well,” he said. “Now we’re going to do a little speed work on Wednesday and taper down, rest them up and get them ready to go on Saturday.”

Zueger and Rambo ran a first-place time of 30 minutes, 19 seconds with Rambo taking final lap.

The duo agreed that the course was wide open and seeing runners throughout the course was a bit different than some of the usual wooded courses and may have provided a bit of a mental challenge.

“It was a super open course,” Rambo said. “We have a lot of narrow courses during the season but with this one you can see competition a long ways away.”

“You could see everything,” Zueger said. “If you look at a corner, you can see out of the corner of your eye the rest of the competition and it definitely makes it a mind game. That’s the one bad part about the course being wide open.”

Johnson and Paupore finished in 34:12 to lead the Miners to the individual girls title.

“It was a super-fast course,” Johnson said. “Obviously it’s one mile but I thought it went really fast.”

Paupore touched on the fact that Johnson is a senior and this was their final relay together.

“It’s super fun because normally you race against each other and today we get to race together,” she said. “We’ve done this together three times so this was our fourth time. It was fun knowing it was our last time doing it together so I think we both worked hard for each other.”

Negaunee head coach Lisa Bigalk said she hopes this meet prepared her team for U.P. Finals.

“I’ve been very happy with my team,” she said. “It’s been very exciting, they’ve done a great job and we’re hopefully peaking for this busy week at (U.P.) Finals. I’m very proud of my runners.”

After Johnson and Paupore, it was the duo of Sall and Asmus coming home in second place in 36:07. The top finishers for Ishpeming in the girls meet were Chyanne Gardner and Katie Loman in sixth place. Tessa Leece and Elizabeth Williams were seventh for Westwood.

In the boys meet, Ishpeming’s Jonah Broberg and Spencer Giroux finished second in 31:00. The Negaunee team of Elliot Prusi and Eric Anderson took third while Westwood’s Andrew Dieterle and Wyatt Carlson were 10th.

Westwood head coach Eric Hill said his team has improved all season and his athletes have been putting in the workload to prepare for U.P. Finals.

“The kids have been putting the time in,” he said. “We’ve had a couple of hard workouts the past few weeks so our times improved a lot between the first time we were at Negaunee and last week at the Mid-Peninsula Conference meet. We’re just hoping we can taper down and not wear our legs out too much for Saturday.”

The teams will compete Saturday morning at Pictured Rocks Golf Course.

Email Ryan Spitza at sports@miningjournal.net

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