Maria Hauger Profile

Former Strib reporter John Millea, who is the media specialist for the MSHSL, wrote the following on Shakopee's Maria Hauger after this year's race.

NORTHFIELD -- Maria Hauger turned back the clock Saturday. And she didn’t wait until bedtime like the rest of us. She did it in the middle of the afternoon and turned it all the way back to 1994. That’s when Dawson-Boyd’s Carrie Tollefson became the only athlete in Minnesota history to win five cross-country state championships.Hauger won the Class 2A state title for the fourth year in a row Saturday at St. Olaf College. She joined Tollefson – who went on to become an NCAA cross-country and track champion at Villanova University and run the 1,500 meters at the 2004 Olympics – as the only four-time champions. Tollefson won three Class 1A titles and two in Class 2A between 1990 and 1994. (Hauger and Tollefson are pictured above in a photo from earlier this season.) Haugen’s other goal in her final high school race in Minnesota was to set a girl's course record. And she did that, too, finishing in 13 minutes, 42 seconds. That shattered the record of 13:54.7 set in 2005 by Bria Wetsch of Holy Family. The second-place finisher was Anna French, a sophomore from Wayzata. Placing third was Alexandria ninth-grader Bethany Hasz, followed by Eagan senior Danielle Anderson and Bemidji sophomore Jenna Truedson. Any time anyone mentions to Hauger that she is in the same hemisphere as Tollefson, she brushes the comparisons aside: “She’s an Olympian, I’m just a high schooler.” Hauger says that another athlete she also looks up to is swimmer Michael Phelps, “even though he’s not a runner. He’s just amazing.”That word fits Hauger pretty well, too. Her running career began when she was in seventh grade and she broke the Shakopee school record in the mile in her very first race. She placed ninth at the state cross-country race in her first appearance, as an eighth-grader, and won every championship race since. The only race in Minnesota she didn’t win in the last four years came earlier this season at the Montgomery Invitational, when Blake junior Clare Flanagan – who captured her second Class 1A title Saturday – reached the finish line 18 seconds ahead of Hauger. Hauger responded with a dominating victory at the Roy Griak Invitational two weeks later, and put a gold-medal cherry on her prep cross-country career Saturday. “I’m pretty exhausted,” she said after the race. “Probably the most exhausting race, though, was the Griak. I felt like I was going to pass out. This one was good.” She said her list of possible colleges has been narrowed to five. She wouldn’t name them, other than saying that the University of Minnesota is among the five.