Photos by Jake McNeill: Marshall’s Oakley Schneekloth (83) and Landrey Graven (77) run amin front of a large pack during the Class AA girls cross country championships at Les Bolstad Golf Course on Saturday in St. Paul.

ST. PAUL — Fielding a young roster with no runners beyond their sophomore season, the Marshall girls cross country team put together a quality performance at the Class AA state meet on Saturday at Les Bolstad Golf Course. While Marshall lost three members from its 2023 state championship run, the Tigers still competed in the stacked field and placed eighth out of 16 teams.

“I just wanted them to come, run hard, get some experience, enjoy the experience and take something away from their season and finish strong,” Marshall head coach Marie Sample said. “We needed each and every one of them to get here. It was hard to get out of our section, so for them to come here and just run hard for each other one more team and see how well they could do.”

The team had hoped to finish in the top half of the field, Sample said. They accomplished that goal and Sample said that the team as a whole is happy with how far they came over the course of the year and is excited to have plenty of positives to build on for next season.

Marshall finished the meet with 211 points, putting them 13 back of seventh-place Hibbing and 12 points ahead of ninth-place Chisago Lakes. 

St. Paul Highland Park won the meet with 53 points, followed by Alexandria with 86 and Perham with 93. Two of those three teams also finished on last year’s podium, with St. Paul Highland Park and Alexandria each tallying 101 points in the 2023 championship meet to finish behind Marshall’s 81.

Katelyn Leibfried, one of three sophomores on the Marshall state meet roster along with Kaitlyn Soupir and Madysson Hasert, earned an All-State finish after finishing just shy a season prior. Leibfried placed 31st in 2023 but moved up to 22nd this time around behind a time of 19:18.5 

Leibfried’s mark was her third-fastest time of the season, trailing only her 19:17.7 time at the section meet and 18:57.4 time at the conference meet. It also outpaced her time from last year’s state meet by 14 seconds.

“We just tried to relax and tell each other that we could do it,” Leibfried said of her pre-match preparation. “We just had to fight for each other and whatever happened would be really good because we tried our hardest.”

Landrey Graven, Oakley Schneekloth and Leibfried were the lone returning scorers from last year’s title run. Graven and Schneekloth finished as Marshall’s No. 3 and No. 4 scorers at the meet, with Graven placing 80th at 20:35.5 and Schneekooth placing 86th at 20:45.2.

“[We told the younger runners] to work together as a team and run for each other. Just thinking about how we can build up on what we have and stick with it,” Graven said when asked about any advice the returners had for the team’s less experienced runners.

Sample said that she feels like the team has asked a lot of Leibfried, Graven and Scheekloth as a sophomore and two freshmen, but that they’ve risen to the occasion. 

“They were literally trying to, I say, herd the cats because the young group that came in were, first of all, very young, so they’ve got a whole different mentality. And second of all, they just don’t have the experience,” Sample said. “So there was a lot of teaching that had to happen and those three were really important pieces in that. If they hadn’t spent the time and energy trying to teach them in our training runs- like those three would yell at the new ones in our training runs to say, ‘Get up here, get in the pack!’ all year long, and even today just getting here, going where they needed to be, getting in that mental mindset that they were trying to get in.”

Sample added that the mental part of the sport was hard for the team with a young roster this year because you can’t build on what you don’t know yet, but she feels that this group is ready to have it going forward.

Schneekloth was an all-state runner in her freshman season, setting a personal-best time of 19:17.8 in the 2023 state meet to place 22nd in the Tigers’ championship run.

Seventh grader Jasmine Murphy was Marshall’s No. 2 runner this year, placing 76th at 20:28.9. She was one of two Marshall scorers in her first season of cross country as Soupir was Marshall’s No. 5 runner in 104th place at 21:10.2.

“[Murphy is] learning to run for her team. She’s really into her team and teammates and she’s picked up that piece, and she’s also got a lot of talent,” Sample said when asked about Murphy’s performance in her first state meet. “She’s worked really hard to get herself in shape to do what she did today, but that extra element of learning to run for something other than yourself and focusing on the people around you, she’s got that already, which is really pretty special.”

While not contributing to the team score, Ayanna Flowers was Marshall’s No. 6 runner, placing 131st at 22:02.4 as an eighth grader, while Hasert placed 139th at 22:15.6.

The team will return its entire roster for next season, boding well for the future.

“I honestly think they were a little bit disappointed, don’t know 100% what they were expecting, but I’m like, ‘You guys, you were at the state meet, you got here, you’re in the top half and this is a lot of your first state meet,'” Sample said. “I’m really, really proud of them, happy with their effort and the fact that they really picked up on the team aspect of it this year. They can do anything now that they have that.”