AT THE STARTING LINE — Members of the Class AA No. 6-ranked Fairmont Cardinals girls cross country team opening the season by playing host to the Early Bird Invitational on Friday, Aug. 27, on the Fairmont High School campus include, front row (l-r): Head coach Bob Bonk, assistant coach Jen Kahler, Ainsley Malo, Rylee Maday, MaKayla Lowry, MaKenzie Lowry, Lily Higgins, Carys Gudahl, Samantha Domeier, Kendra Blomster and assistant coach Holly Neusch. Back row: Audrina Suckow, Ella Krahmer, Eleanor Hamlet, Paige DeBoer, Macy Hanson, Emma Gudahl, Laura Thompson, Norah Traetow and assistant coach Stew Murfield. (Photo by Greg Abel)

FAIRMONT — The Class AA No. 6-rated Fairmont girls cross country team might score a lot of top-two finishes this season.

No. 8-ranked individual runner Laura Thompson, a five-time state qualifier — including last year’s TC Running Company Cross Country Showcase, will lead the way as a captain for the fourth consecutive year. But for the first time, Thompson will not have Hannah Neusch and Tabitha Thatcher as co-captains.

After the graduation of Neusch and Thatcher, senior Emma Gudahl will take over as the Fairmont girls’ second captain.

“At this point, Laura is more like an assistant coach,” Fairmont head cross country coach Bob Bonk said of his fourth-year leader. “She’s phenomenal, that’s all there is to say. Emma Gudahl has taken up the mantle as our other captain and I think Emma is doing a really good job. She’s a busy girl, she’s a three-sport athlete and she also has been busy with work, but she’s a high-energy person and well-liked. She’s doing really well.”

Thompson and Emma Gudahl will lead a Cardinal team that includes one other senior, Eleanor Hamlet, one junior in Lily Higgins, six freshmen and six eighth-graders.

The team returns five of the seven runners who took part in last year’s TC Running replacement for the Minnesota State High School League state meet. Along with Thompson and Emma Gudahl, who placed 87th, Macy Hanson placed 25th as an individual last year, grabbing the final all-state spot with a time of 20:51.6 in her second state meet. Carys Gudahl finished 63rd in her second state meet, while Eleanor Hamlet took 62nd in her first.

With so much experience from last year’s major race coming back, Bonk said he believes the opportunity brought self-sufficence to the Cardinal roster.

“I think it helped them be more self-disciplined,” Bonk said. “We were in a position, I think, to be a top-five team in the state. But that whole stretch where others were competing in conference and sections and we couldn’t compete because of Martin County’s COVID numbers, that was a long haul.

“We couldn’t race or practice from early October to late October, and the kids had to be on their own. … I think they gained a lot in self-discipline, but it wasn’t the same. … I think overall … it was a positive experience for them. … Hopefully that will be something that can help us.”

Hanson finished second for the Cardinals behind Thompson regularly last season and Bonk said he expects the pair to take top spots in most of their races this year.

“Macy is a great runner in her own right,” Bonk said. “With Laura and Macy, if they scored only two people, we would be in really great shape. (Hanson) is definitely better than she’s been in the past and she’s been really good for the past two years. There’s no doubt, assuming everyone stays healthy and everything goes fine the day of races, that they will be a great one-two punch in every competition.”

After the Fairmont frontrunners, Bonk said there will likely be a slight drop in times before the next three Cardinal counting scores cross the finish line.

Bonk said the key to Fairmont’s success this season will be trimming the gap between the team’s second counting time and its third.

“Carys will surely be a big part of that, she’s has probably established herself, I think, as our third runner,” Bonk said. “After that, there’s some others, Eleanor has been a strong runner … Samantha Domeier has got potential to be in that next group … And then another young girl who’s looking good is Audrina Suckow, she was our fifth runner (in Thursday’s team time trials). We’re hoping for one or two of the other younger girls to kind of be a surprise and just jump in there as well.”

While Bonk continues to learn more about his team, he said he believes it has had a good first week. He said he is glad to look at a schedule that looks like a pre-pandemic schedule again and he is excited to get the year started.

“We don’t have as big of numbers as we usually have, … we have to stay healthy that’s for sure,” Bonk said. “But it’s fun to get back out there again and cross country runners are the salt of the earth in many ways. … I’ve kind of reminded the athletes, a lot of times people are afraid to come out and run because they just think it’s gonna be so hard. … They don’t understand how team-oriented the whole thing is. … When you go through something that’s tough … there’s a real camaraderie that develops. … We have a lot of three-sport athletes, and many of them start cross country because they think it will help their other sports or their parents push them to do it. But I believe, for many of them, by the time they graduate, cross country is their favorite sport. I think it’s that team family feeling that they get from the sport.”