MADISON – The Menomonie High School girls cross country program has at least six alumni currently running collegiately this season – and three of them ran in the same NCAA Division I event Friday, Oct. 9 at the Nuttycombe University of Wisconsin Invitational.

And the Menomonie graduates that are running for area Division III schools ran at the Running of the Cows event Oct. 3 hosted by Carleton College on the same course that will host the NCAA Division III Cross Country Championships in November.

At Madison, the three former Menomonie runners were all running their first year with their teams.

Fifth-year Bella Jacobsen runs for the University of Colorado. Jacobsen ran for Wisconsin during her undergraduate career, but is using her final year of eligibility in Boulder, Colo., after graduating from Madison last spring. Lauren McCalla is a freshman at the University of Washington and Bennett Schmitt is a freshman at Madison.

Jacobsen ran in the Championship race, while McCalla and Schmitt participated in what was called the B race. Jacobson, running her first race for Colorado, finished 71st in a time of 20-minutes, 32.9-seconds. McCalla, coming off a stellar high school career where she claimed two state track and field titles and a cross country title, finished 51st in  a time of 21:57.1. Schmitt, a second team all-stater who qualified to the high school state championship four times, placed 97th in a time of 23:35.9.

Brooklyn Hoff, a junior at UW-Stevens Point, Kyah Barnhart, a freshman at UW-Stout Polytechnic, and Sara Palmer, a freshman at Gustavus Adolphus College, participated in the Running of the Cows.

Out of a field of 324 runners in the Navy race, Hoff placed 150th in a time of 23:22.9. In the Maize field of nearly 400 runners, Palmer placed 156th in a time of 25:18.2 while Barnhart was 279th in a time of 27:05.0.

Menomonie Collegians is a regular feature of Menomonie News Net. The column is not limited to student-athletes, but may be a former Menomonie area student in a play, forensics, music or any type of collegiate competition. If you know of a Menomonie Collegian, please email [email protected].

The column “Menomonie Collegians” by Layne Pitt is licensed under a CC BY SA 4.0 International license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Menomonie Mustangs Athletics and Activities | UW-Stout Blue Devil Athletics