A Kansas City student is among the fastest middle schoolers in the country.
Ella Messner ran 1600 meters in 5:04.35 at the HOKA Festival of Miles in St. Louis this spring, breaking her previous personal record by 17 seconds. That time is the fifth-fastest mile for middle school girls in the country right now.
"It was exactly what we had trained for," Messner told KCUR's Up To Date. "We'd been training for it for a long time, so I was ready for it."
Messner just finished 8th grade at Académie Lafayette. The track program there is popular with students, and it's produced several accomplished runners, including Henry Acorn, a Rockhurst High School student who ran the 1600 meters in 4:06.31 this year.
Messner isn't just fast; she also has grit. In her race to defend her state title for cross country this year, she lost a shoe near the beginning of the race. After stopping multiple times, she decided to finish it out — and made up a 60-meter difference to win by one second.
"She's got this fight in her that you can't inject into people. It was the gutsiest thing I've ever seen," Brenda Hayes-Kumm, Messner's coach, told KCUR's Up To Date.
- Ella Messner, incoming high school freshman and fifth-fastest middle school miler in the U.S.
- Brenda Hayes-Kumm, elementary and middle school track and cross country coach at Académie Lafayette
