Beaming in Boardman, Mogadore girls cross country advances to state
BOARDMAN — Last year, Katie Lane and Rachel Whetstone qualified for the state meet and the rest of the Wildcats came a point shy of joining them at Fortress Obetz.
There were only tears of happiness Saturday.
Mogadore didn't just advance to state as a team for the first time at Saturday's Boardman Regional. The Wildcats also brought home the regional championship trophy, taking first with 62 points, 21 ahead of runner-up Norwayne.
"I'm just incredibly proud of them," Mogadore coach Diana Morris said. "We've been storming the doors of state as a team, and we just crushed through it today.
"So I just can't be more proud of them. They've worked together as a team. They've learned what it means to be a team. And lots of them have had different pieces of that puzzle. Somebody running here, somebody running there and it's all come together and it's just a perfect, perfect result."
For all but Lane and Whetstone, Saturday marked a milestone as they secured their first state berths.
"I'm just very happy," Mogadore junior Mia Gaetjens said. "It's my junior year and I haven't been yet, and it's been a goal of mine. Like last year, I was devastated. I thought I had a chance of making it, and I didn't do it last year or this year [as an individual], but it's going to be great going with my team."
What a difference a year makes.
Roughly a year ago, Whetstone didn't think she could make it to the state meet, let alone send the whole team to state. To that point, Mogadore had advanced a handful of individuals, like Hope Murphy and Lane, to state, but never a team.
Last year at Boardman, Whetstone proved herself wrong on one front, taking 14th to qualify as an individual alongside Lane.
But the 2021 Wildcats came one point shy of advancing as a team.
"It was awful," sophomore Emma Quillen said. "It was like we literally can see it. We had it, but something happened and we kind of let go."
A year later at Boardman, the Wildcats proved they could send their entire team to Fortress Obetz.
"This year, we came in it strong, nice and hype," Whetstone said. "I hyped the girls up before the race. We were all screaming. We were doing our chants and we went and ran the race of our lives."
On the topic of running "the race of our lives," Whetstone (7th/11th, 20:10.4) dropped more than a minute off her time from a year ago, staying behind Lane (6th/10th, 20:02.4) the entire way.
"We've added more people every year," Lane said. "It just went from me being a freshman all by myself on that line, but this year, we get to look and not see just one Mogadore person or two Mogadore people, we see a whole, just all of us together running together."
The Wildcats came in a Kelly green pack Saturday, with Lane and Whetstone followed across the line by the Gaetjens sisters, Kai (12th/21st, 21:27.6) and Mia (15th/25th, 21:40.6), with the former delivering her biggest performance yet.
"She's been after it," Morris said of the freshman. "She was just on fire today. Her sister might put her back in her place next week, but I think it's all healthy competition."
Quillen (22nd/33rd, 21:54.1) gave Mogadore five finishers in the top 33 (and five scorers in the top 22), meaning that after last year's torturous wait, in which the Wildcats were announced as the fourth and final qualifying team at one point before discovering they had finished sixth, there would be no suspense this year.
These Wildcats had left no doubt.
"I thought it was cool when we were all finishing, if you just looked behind, you could see another Mogadore person coming in, another Mogadore person, everyone coming in," Lane said. "When they said that we had our first five people in and then all our seven people in before any other team, I thought that was the coolest thing ever."
This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Mogadore girls cross country captures regional title, makes state
