East Ridge 13-year-old steals 7A track show
Gracelynn Otis, 13-year-old 8th grader from East Ridge, completed a Section 7A double in the girls 2-mile after also winning the mile -- both with personal bests.
By John Gilbert
Personal bests, meet record times and getting to the state track meet are always the focal points of a sectional track meet. But every once in a while, one specific event goes way beyond such normal highlights and puts an indelible stamp on the entire event. That was the story of the Section 7A track meet, held at Malosky Stadium.
Near the end of the daylong finals, the most scintillating finish came in the girls 3,200-meter run. That’s two miles — eight times around the 400-meter track — which is a long race. This one looked like a good race, with two girls running away with the lead. My attention was focused on a little girl, running back in the middle of the pack most of the way, and when she moved up to third place, I thought it was a worthy performance for someone who looked like the little sister of the other competitors,
With one lap remaining, she was almost the whole length of the straightaway behind the co-leaders, and as the leaders went down the backstretch, I maneuvered to get into position for what I anticipated would be a bang-bang finish.
Imagine my surprise when I focused in on the leaders coming around the final far turn onto the homestretch, and the littlest runner was in the lead! Gracelynn Otis had not only made up 40 yards to catch the leaders, she passed them both coming around the turn, and sped down the final straightaway to hit the finish line with her arms thrust to the skies.
“This is my second 7A meet,” she said. “I was fifth in the two-mile last year. But I’m just an eighth-grader.”
An eighth-grader? How old does that make you?
“Thirteen,” she said.
A couple of observers near me had discussed in expert terms how Gracelynn played it perfectly, holding back and then timing her finish to overtake the leaders. She would have gotten quite a laugh out of such lofty strategy. Actually, she surprised herself, coming into the event with the fourth-best time, and, she admitted, no intention of contending for the victory.
“I felt dead with a lap to go,” she said. “I felt tired because I had just done my personal best in the mile. But then I saw that I had a chance, so I went harder than I had been counting on.”
Her swift finish beat Lindsey Dahl-Holm of Carlton by a half-second, and her winning time of 11:51.50 was the best she had ever done at 3,200 meters — 10 seconds faster than her previous best all season.
That’s what made it such a magical day. Earlier, Gracelynn was ranked third-best going into the 1,600, but she won that with a time of 5:17.22, almost 5 seconds under her previous best time, to beat Esko’s Kailee Kiminski by over 9 seconds. Then in the 2-mile, she not only runs her personal best, but won with a comeback of Kentucky Derby proportions.
Remember the name, Gracelynn Otis from East Ridge. She will be back, and with a better resume, in the spring of 2013, when she is a veteran ninth-grader. Or, in the 7A meet of 2016, when she’ll be a senior who could be heading for her fifth state meet.
I had to ask where East Ridge was. I mean, it’s not like you can head for downtown East Ridge. Years ago, the tiny towns of Alborn and Brookston merged into a consolidated high school and they called it AlBrook — capital “B” please — to keep both identities. Now the kids from Cotton have joined up, and the new school halfway between Duluth the the Iron Range is named East Ridge.
BASEBALL NEARS STATE
Denfeld wound up 18-5 for the softball season, with three of those losses to 7AA champion Forest Lake. Denfeld beat St. Francis behind Nikki Logergren’s pitching, while Forest Lake whipped Duluth East in the regional. Forest Lake, which beat Denfeld 1-0 late in the season, was loaded up and ready for the rematch, scoring eight runs in the first inning, and beating the Hunters 8-1 in the double-elimination tournament. That put St. Francis into the elimination game against East, and St. Francis ended the Greyhounds season, 4-0. Sarah Hendrickson pitched Denfeld to a 2-0 shutout over St. Francis to regain the final pairing, but the Hunters still couldn’t solve Forest Lake’s powerful lineup.
Logergren pitched the first game, then turned the pitching over to Hendrickson, who pitched three straight games. Logergren was busy putting on a batting clinic. It seemed as though every pitch was either a ball or a line drive when Logergren was batting. She hit every ball hard through the first two games, and when she finally hit a short squib against St. Francis, she clearly beat the throw but was called out. Had instant replay been used to review that one, Logergren would have been 8-for-8 by my count.
There was one questionable one, when she hit a low rocket through Forest Lake’s star second baseman, but if she could have seen it, she might have caught it, and it’s a hit in my book. Logergren also got two more hits in the final loss to Forest Lake, which means she went into the sectional tournament hitting something over .500, and then went 9-for-11 in the 7AA tournament. At St. Scholastica next season, Logergren will concentrate on hockey, then on applying her bat to the Saints softball program.
STEWART SECTION
Is it possible for AMSOIL Arena officials to declare that corner area of the stands “Stewart Section?” Dick Stewart, the wonderful man who built Stewart Sporting Goods to the area’s mosts prominent sports store, had become a fixture at all UMD home games since retiring and selling his store. Both at the DECC and now at AMSOIL, Dick would respond to the urging of fans by standing up and waving his little hanging flag thing, to the roars of approval from all the fans.
It seems like just a couple weeks ago when we got a chance to give Dick a big 90th birthday party at Heritage Center, but it was two years ago. Time goes by. Dick’s wife Maxine, who didn’t go to games with Dick in recent years, died on May 26. Nine days later, Dick joined her, dying at age 92 after a fabulous life of brightening the lives of all those he ever knew.
He used to be actively involved with sports teams in the area, but in later years, it was always fun to stop by the store, on 15th Avenue East and Superior Street, and joke around with Dick and the rest of his staff. The best Peewee hockey team in the area was invariably sponsored by Stewart’s. He sold the store, which expanded to be adjacent to Heritage Center, then closed the original store. But it’s still Stewart’s, and the popularity of the man and his store were nothing compared to the adulation heaped on him by UMD fans, particularly throughout the 2010-11 season, when the Bulldogs gave Dick their first NCAA championship.
At his 90th birthday, an endless stream of people came by to wish him well. I said to Dick, “You know, you’re so popular with everybody, maybe you should open a store.” Dick got a big laugh out of that, and it felt good to see him laugh. That’s the way I’ll remember him.
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About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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