By John Raffel
Karrigan Smith will be missed at St. John’s cross country program.
It’s not every year you have a state championship runner on the team.
The St. Johns senior won the Division 2 state races at the finals Nov. 1 with a 18:11 on the Michigan International Speedway course.
She defeated defending champion Kenzie Smith of Cedar Springs by 2.5 seconds.
“Everything unfolded the way I wanted to,” she said. “Obviously going in, I knew I wanted to be a state champ and I’m glad I could perform to the best of my ability.”
Smith was confident the win was hers until she cross the finish line.
“Kenzie Weiler is a great athlete and a strong runner,” Smith said. “I knew she’d put up a great fight.”
The weather was cold and windy, “but tactically, it was among my best races of the year,” Smith said. “Timewise, it wasn’t the greatest. Today I wasn’t racing for time but for placing.”
Smith finished third as a junior in 18:04.0 at the state finals. It’s her fourth season on the team.
“What stands out for me is last spring, my state championship in the 1,600 meters,” Smith said. “Ever since then, I wanted to reach out for that moment and rekindle that fire every single day in the offseason to go after that state championship again.”
Smith recalls that when she finished the 2013 race, she was basically happy with her performance.
“I was grateful for the season,” she said. “It gave me a little more of a fire in my mind that I wanted to go for higher places.”
Her best time this year prior to the regionals was 18:30.
“I’m happy the way things are going so far this season,” Smith said. “I think specifically this year I’ve been working on keeping my mind in the right place and having some good quality workouts especially in the last couple of meets. I couldn’t be more excited.”
Smith said she wasn’t focusing on time as much as she was zeroing on as high of a place as possible at state.
“That’s my top priority as we entered the championship phase,” she said. “The higher the better. That’d be great.”
Smith said her strength has been having a strong race plan and executing it “and reading my competitors based on previous races and seeing how they’re doing during the race and going with that.”
Smith was hoping to run with her team at the state finals but wound up being a lone performer.
Smith was her conference meet winner and also took first in the Greater Lansing meet.
“It was special for me because it was the first time in my school history anyone had won that meet,” she said.
“I am very pleased with the season Karrigan is having with multiple invitational championships, conference champion and all-area champion,” Bob Sackrider, St. John’s coach said. “I feel this year she has taken the greatest stride forward in her four years of high school running. Her times may not seem that way, but times are a product of multiple variables beyond how a runner competes. I have seen her this year take over races on a consistent basis in a way she has not done in the past. She is for the first time truly running both smart and aggressive.
“Her strengths are her intelligence and her dedication. She is always aware what will happen, what is happening and what did happen in every race. She is then able to will herself to do what is necessary to win.”