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Saturday, the Winona State University junior was back on a cross country team and didn’t miss a beat.
Southworth won the five-kilometer Saint Mary’s University Alumni Open in 19 minutes, 56 seconds, leading the Warriors to a first-place finish at the four-team event.
Southworth was running with the pack for the first two miles, but heading into the final mile, she “just wanted to get it over with,” Southworth said, winning by over 27 seconds.
“This is a tough course,” she continued, “and I knew it was a small meet, but I never thought I would win.”
Though Southworth hasn’t run cross country since high school — where she helped Marshfield (Wis.) High School take seventh in 2005 and 13th in 2002 — it is a little deceiving. It’s not like she hasn’t been competing.
She’s a junior at WSU in the classroom, but on the cross country team, she is of freshman eligibility.
After graduating from Marshfield in 2006, Southworth had intentions of going to Winona State, but decided on UW-Oshkosh to play basketball instead.
As a freshman, Southworth averaged 17.5 minutes a game at shooting guard, and ran the 800- and 1,500-meter races for the track team.
The next season, however, she had an itch to go to Winona State.
“I felt this is where I belonged,” she said.
Southworth transferred after the fall semester last year and participated on the WSU track team, then worked all summer to prepare for cross country with teammates like Steph Smith.
“She has great natural ability,” said Smith, who took third at SMU on Saturday (20:48.3) and was a teammate of Southworth’s at Marshfield. “She wasn’t liking Oshkosh, and I told her she should still run. She transferred, came out for track and was awesome last year.”
Southworth competed in outdoor track and had the fastest 1,500 (4:55.69) and steeplechase (11:48.37) times on the team.
“It’s great to have her,” WSU cross country coach Neal Mundahl said. “We now have three teammates from Marshfield (including freshman Amy Pawelko).”
With newcomers like Southworth, Mundahl feels his women’s team will be an improved one this season.
“We should be stronger than last year,” Mundahl said. “It’s just too bad we don’t have another meet for two weeks.”
On the men’s side for WSU, it was another newcomer who made a big impact. Freshman Bryan Lindquist took fourth overall. Winning the four-mile race was 2000 SMU graduate Mark Bolster.
Bolster, 30, finished in 22:29.3 and Lindquist crossed in 22:45.5 behind runners from Viterbo and Concordia St. Paul.
“It was exciting to see Lindquist come in fourth,” Mundahl said, “and our two captains (Ryan Ledin and Ryan Slack) come in behind him (in fifth and seventh).”
On the SMU side, fourth-year coach Ward Berndt feels his teams are young and steadily improving.
“We’re just working on experience, patience and learning,” Berdnt said. “We have a lot of freshmen and sophomores.
“We may not see any huge jumps (in standings), but we won’t see any slides, either.”
Sophomore Jared Brandenburg led the way for SMU with a fifth-place finish (23:47.1), while teammates Quentin Moore (24:06.6) and David Feather (24:18.7) came in sixth and seventh. SMU finished first as a team, Winona State came in second and Viterbo was third.
Of the top seven runners on both the SMU and WSU men’s teams, only one on each was older than a sophomore.
On the women’s side, both WSU and SMU had two runners that were juniors or seniors.
SMU junior Anne Shutte was the top women’s runner, finishing seventh (21:15.6).
