Before the district cross country meet began, Gracie Troester had the third-best time of the runners in the field. She wasn’t about to finish that way.
Troester knocked 16 seconds off her personal best time, set a new Republic record, and out-dueled favorite Ashlyn Smith of Raymore-Peculiar down the stretch to win the Class 5 District 2 championship. Her time of 18:12.80 is nearly 40 seconds faster than the school record she held when this season began.
Troester said she knew she had a chance to catch Smith and Maya York, also of Ray-Pec, despite their faster times coming into the day.
“My game plan coming in was to just go out there and run my race, and hope for the best. I knew that I could get them. I just had to just breathe and focus,” she said.
Smith and Troester traded leads throughout the race, and at the two-mile mark, Troester trailed by about eight seconds. Last year in the district tournament, Smith out-raced Troester after taking a lead. This time, Troester didn’t let that happen again.
“Whenever she took off back there, I was like, ‘Crap, why am I letting her go? This is where I let her go last year.’ So then I just decided, ‘You can’t let her get in your head.’ I took off and I caught her at the 100 and took off as fast as I could to get first.”
Troester finished 0.78 seconds ahead of Smith to get the championship. She’ll compete in Columbia at the state championships next weekend.
Kristin Probst will be joining Troester after finishing 12th and setting her own personal record (19:29.48).
“Mile one was actually slower than I ran at COC last week. It was about two seconds slower, but I knew that was going to be okay in the long run, as long as my second mile made up for it, and so my second mile was faster today,” Probst said. “I ran about two seconds faster than COC, and I was able to save a little bit for the end… and I was able to catch the girl that I was tracking down the whole time the last two seconds, so that was pretty fun.”
In the boys race, Brady Purcell qualified for the state meet with a time 16:21.28, finishing 27th. After being disappointed with his performance in the Central Ozark Conference race on the same course last week, he didn’t hold anything back, even from the start.
“I was just trying to not conserve at all and just trying to stick with the front couple of groups. I didn’t exactly do that today, but I still ran way faster than I have in the whole season, and just pushing myself through each mile and never letting up. And I was just trying to stay in it mentally the whole time,” he said.