Performance: Hanover-Horton's Judy Rector
September 13, 2018
Judy Rector
Hanover-Horton senior – Cross Country
The Hanover-Horton senior has returned from injury to become a two-time MHSAA Finals track champion, and she’s surged into her senior cross country season pacing among the state’s elite in that sport as well. Rector ran a personal-record 18:07.7 on Saturday to win the Class 3 race at Bath’s Bret Clements Invitational and also best the winners of the event’s two larger-school races, earning her the first Michigan Army National Guard “Performance of the Week” for 2018-19.
Saturday was the second time in four races this fall that Rector lowered her personal record, and she’s now dropped 37 seconds from her fastest finish of 2017. As a sophomore, Rector began suffering from slipping rib syndrome – one of her ribs would pop out of place, causing intense pain. She was forced to take six months off from running and missed her track & field season that spring while undergoing physical therapy. She ran again for the first time on the day of the 2017 MHSAA Track & Field Finals, built back her strength for cross country last fall and finished 10th in Lower Peninsula Division 3, and then won the 800 and 1,600-meter LPD3 track championships this spring.
Rector’s winning time at Bath bested the lineups from the top-ranked teams in both LPD1 and LPD2, plus racers from five more teams ranked among the top 10 in those divisions. She’s got big goals for the rest of this senior year. She’s aiming to run 17:30, which would break the school cross country record set by 2012 graduate Lindsey Burdette, and finish top-three at this fall’s Finals and qualify for the Foot Locker national competition. Next spring, she’ll try to repeat in the 800 and 1,600 and make a run at the 3,200 as well. With only one A- scratching an otherwise perfect academic record, Rector is carrying a 3.99 grade-point average, tied for sixth in her graduating class. She’s still figuring out where, but she’s planning to study biology and continue her running career at the collegiate level.
Coach Dean Blackledge said: “We knew we had a special athlete when she was a freshman. The only one who didn't know was Judy. It took her a while to really understand she's as good as she is. A year and a half ago she was really in the dumps, the whole thing, because she couldn't run. … (But) we worked though the difficult times for her, spent an awful lot of time together, and she got it. When she did finally get through it, she just blossomed into the runner that I always thought she was going to be. She’s just tough in training and self-discipline. When you talk about a cross country runner, the main thing more than in probably any other sport is a cross country runner has to be self-disciplined. They have to get up and run five or six or 10 miles or whatever when other kids are sleeping or whatever, and they have to do that year-round almost. She’s been that kind of athlete. When we do a workout we go out on the roads sometimes to run, and they can cut corners whenever they want and the coach would never know. I don’t think Judy has ever cut a corner. … She’s just a great leader. She has humility, and it’s tough to get an athlete as good as she is that doesn’t boast about themselves. If you want to know something about Judy, you have to talk to somebody else. She won a couple of state championships in equestrian, and I didn’t know that until 2-3 weeks ago – and I’ve been her coach, been close to her, and she’s never said a word about it.”
Performance Point: “My goal going into (Bath) was actually to try to get under 18 (minutes),” Rector said. “Last year when we ran at Bath, I didn't run very well. I was really sick, so this year I wanted to put up a good time because I knew from last year that it was a good course to run. Fortunately it was a lot cooler in the morning, a lot better running weather than we had earlier that week on Wednesday. I was like, we're going to try to maintain a 5:45 split, which would put me just under 18. I have a tendency to go faster at the beginning of my races, and I thought if I tried to even-split it more that it would be better. At the 2-mile I was at 11:35, 11:40, so I knew I was running well at that point. It was just trying to finish going into the last mile. I knew where I was at time-wise, but more than anything I kept seeing my teammates, like the last mile. There were the boys and some of the JV girls – every time I saw them, it makes it easier to keep going. Your teammates are there and they're cheering you on, and they want you to do well. That picked me up a lot for the last part of the race too.”
Comeback trail: “For me, that was a really hard thing. Before I got injured, running was something I enjoyed and I was fairly good at. But when you're supposed to be going to rehab and doing all of those things, you really have to put yourself into it 110 percent. When they ask you to do things like the exercises and stuff, I was like, This is crazy. No way.’ They're like, it will help you. ... Having goals helped me because I'm a really goal-driven person. So coming out of that and not being able to run, I knew I valued it a lot more, just being able to go outside and being able to run and having the ability to do that because some people don't even have that. Having it in my head that I didn't want to take anything else for granted – every time I did a workout or went out to run, it was the best effort that I could do.”
Finding form: “Last summer was just trying to build up to where I was in the high 18s. This (spring’s) track season was huge for me and getting me the confidence that I could be running faster, not just short distance things but cross country too. Over the past year I've worked a lot on my form and a lot more on basic strength, the little things that I didn't necessarily do before. So I feel a lot more smooth when I'm running.”
Back on track: “After taking all of that time off, I started running on the day of the (track) state meet a year ago – so it would've been a full year from not being able to run to starting running, to the day I won those two championships. It was really emotional. I never would've imagined being able to do all of that in a year. ... It had always been a goal I had to maybe run and win a state championship, but that I was able to do it, in that amount of time, I was just so happy and proud.”
Future path: “(I’d like to become) a pathologist, someone who researches and studies diseases. I really like science classes. Last year I took a microbiology class that was more based on studying diseases, and we took samples of things from around our school and looked at them and ran tests on them, and I thought was super cool. If I could do something like that or in the medical field, that's a long-term goal for me.”
- Geoff Kimmerly, Second Half editor
Every week during the 2018-19 school year, Second Half and the Michigan Army National Guard will recognize a “Performance of the Week" from among the MHSAA's 750 member high schools.
The Michigan Army National Guard provides trained and ready forces in support of the National Military Strategy, and responds as needed to state, local, and regional emergencies to ensure peace, order, and public safety. The Guard adds value to our communities through continuous interaction. National Guard soldiers are part of the local community. Guardsmen typically train one weekend per month and two weeks in the summer. This training maintains readiness when needed, be it either to defend our nation's freedom or protect lives and property of Michigan citizens during a local natural disaster.
PHOTOS: (Top) Hanover-Horton's Judy Rector leads the way during a race this fall. (Middle) Rector powers down the straight-away during the Track Finals this spring. (Photos by Joe Childs and Marlissa Shepherd, respectively.)
Finals Aspirations Drive Experienced Laker Cross Country Teams as 2025 Chase Begins
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
August 21, 2025
When Aubrey Zarnke started running cross country nine years ago in the Elkton Pigeon Bay Port Laker elementary program, she wasn’t thinking about being part of a varsity turnaround.
In fact, it wasn’t something she thought was possible until the end of her sophomore season, two years ago.
“It was a lot different (when I started), the team was a lot smaller, but I just kind of joined and I stayed with it,” Zarnke said. “It kept growing and got so much more fun. I would say when our boys varsity team won the league championship (in 2023), that was a really big thing. Then it kept getting bigger, and records kept getting broken.”
Now a senior, Zarnke is part of a cross country renaissance at Laker, with both boys and girls teams coming off Big Thumb Conference titles and having their eyes on a trip to the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 3 Finals on Nov. 1 at Michigan International Speedway. The boys advanced as a team a year ago for the first time since 1994, while the girls are looking for their first trip.
“I feel like it’s a lot better than if only one was doing it,” Zarnke said. “It’s almost like we’re lighting a fire in each other and pushing even more to be better.”
Mike Klosowski, a 1999 Laker graduate and former runner at the school, took over the program in 2009. At that point, he said, getting enough kids to score as a team was hard.
He got to work building elementary and middle school programs, and it’s paying dividends – not only in quality, but quantity.
Now, the boys are carrying nine runners, and the girls have 11.
“This has been a lot of fun,” Klosowski said. “I’ve taken some of the stuff I did and that my coaches taught me when I was in cross country, and now we’re doing that same thing in the same locations, same spots. That’s kind of fun.”
As this current group was coming up through his program, Klosowski could see the potential.
“When a lot of this core group was in middle school, they had some great success, so I thought they could be very good if they could stay together and keep working hard,” Klosowski said. “A lot of it is their offseason willingness to put time in and work. But also the fact they’re just a real tight group. They get along real well, work well together, push each other and keep each other on track. They’re like a big family, and it’s great to see that.”
This year’s Laker teams look a lot like last year’s teams, as both bring back the majority of their runners.
For the boys, six of the seven runners who competed at the MHSAA Finals are returning, including junior Evan Olson, who holds the school record at 16 minutes, 16.2 seconds. Olson finished two places from earning all-state a year ago.
Sophomore Kale Miklovic, juniors Henry Haag and Noah Mantey, and seniors Achilles Jackson and Jeffrey Ignash also return from the Finals-qualifying team.
Miklovic and Olson both won their first race of the year, as the Lakers ran at the Hemlock Huskie Classic, which runs a freshmen/sophomore race and a junior/senior race.
Two other freshmen – Walter Haag and Jonah Mantey – also placed among the top seven, adding more strength to an already established team.
Also in that boat is junior Noah Young, who had not run since middle school.
On the girls size, Zarnke is one of two runners who qualified for the Finals last year as an individual, as she was joined in Brooklyn by junior Pyper Braun.
The Lakers were two points away from tying for third place in last year’s Regional, and all six runners who competed that day have returned, also including sophomores Lydia Popp and Julia Shupe, junior Olivia Hooper and senior Payton Scott.
Hooper is also a returning Finals qualifier, having raced at MIS as a freshman. She’s healthy now after being slowed by injuries a year ago.
That core, plus the motivation of getting so close a year ago, has the Laker girls fired up to make that first run to the Finals.
“It would be crazy,” Zarnke said. “We’ve already got so much support from the community just with us growing. But that would be amazing. I don’t even know how to describe it.”
Laker was scheduled to run today at the Birch Run Early Invitational, a meet that features some of the top schools in the state in all divisions.
Among them are teams Laker would be competing with at the Regional this year, like Ithaca and St. Louis.
“We had a good talk on Monday, reflecting back on the (Hemlock) meet on Friday and how it was our first meet,” Klosowski said. “This week at Birch Run, there are a lot of schools we’ll see at Regionals, and we talked about how we want to set the tone early, and put our mark and our stamp on things. Show everyone that we’re the real deal.”
Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Elkton-Pigeon-Bay Port Laker’s Aubrey Zarnke (2027) races toward the finish during last season’s MHSAA Finals at MIS. (Middle) Evan Olson (840) works to outpace a pair of runners during the closing stretch of his Finals race. (Photos by RunMichigan.com.)