Omaha Marian’s Stella Miner races to state record as freshman
OMAHA, Neb. (BVM) — Omaha Marian cross country coach Roger Wright didn’t know who Stella Miner was until the middle of last summer when the then-incoming freshman, who had just moved from New Jersey, asked to join her soon-to-be teammates and coach for their offseason lake run training. But it didn’t take long for Wright to find out that he might be getting more than just another runner to join his program.
“The first day [of training] you can choose a three or four-and-a-half mile [run] and a lot of times someone just coming in will choose the three mile,” Wright said. “But no, she wanted to run the four and a half and she ran with my best kids, stayed with them the whole way around the lake the first time, so I kind of knew I had a fairly good runner there. She turned out to be better than even I would’ve guessed.”
Miner actually turned out to be the top runner in Nebraska by the end of her first-ever cross country season. The Gatorade Nebraska Girls Cross Country Player of the Year, who had only run track prior to arriving at Marian, not only ended up winning the state meet, she did so in a meet-record time of 18 minutes and 11 seconds.
“After the first race it wasn’t so much of a surprise anymore,” Rogers said. “Her time just basically went down through the year until she ended up running an 18:11 at state and that ended up being the fastest time that’s ever been run on the state course at a state meet, which is really something.”
The record-setting run is likely just the start for Miner, and cross country probably isn’t going to be the only sport at which the freshman will excel for the Crusaders. According to Rogers, Miner also currently has the state’s top time in the 3,200-meter run (10:56), the second-fastest time in the 1,600 (5:05) and the fastest time in the 800. While she’s recently been fighting a stress fracture, an injury which she also dealt with in middle school, she should be back in time to compete for more titles in track and field with district and state competitions coming later this month.
Injuries aside, Rogers doesn’t foresee anything holding Miner back from achieving even more great things as a runner going forward. She’s likely just scratched the surface of her potential.
“Her second half of the race is just naturally faster than the first half,” Rogers said. “I’ve coached a few athletes like that over my many years of coaching but hers is just natural and I saw it from the first race. I thought she was starting too slow, but she comes on. That’s just kind of her natural run. She usually sits on the leaders of the first part of the race. She’ll sit on them but she can get them in the second half of the race because her speed just picks up. If I knew how to tell people how to do that, I’d try to coach everyone to do that.”
