June 15, 2021
Team captain, girls tennis and equestrian team state champion, chamber choir member, National Honor Society inductee, thespian, Science Olympiad participant. Kate Roach ’11 accomplished amazing feats at Mounds Park Academy, but her latest and loftiest goal, the opportunity to represent the United States in the Tokyo Olympics, would top any of that.
Before Olympic dreams popped onto Roach’s radar, she was a standout tennis player and equestrian. On the tennis court, Roach and her teammates dominated the Minnesota high school scene for years. She was part of two class A state doubles championships and a member of state championship tennis teams in 2007 and 2009, earning six varsity letters. Read More
When Kim Bourne ‘12 looks back on the MSHSL state Nordic ski championships her senior year, her second consecutive year at state, her most distinct memory doesn’t come from the actual race but rather the feeling she got when four of her MPA teammates also qualified.
Kristen Bourne’s senior Nordic ski season didn’t begin with the hot start she had hoped for. Even after devoting her entire off season to training and coming in to the winter in top form, she was in a funk mentally that was proving hard to break. But with supportive teammates and coaches, she found herself relaxing more and midway through the season, approached her races from a different perspective. Success soon followed.
As Lukas Lindgren, then a ninth grader, walked through the fieldhouse at St. Olaf College after his first ever appearance at the MSHSL state cross country meet, he got an important lesson in mentorship. “As we were entering the facility, I told two upperclassmen that I had just gotten a big personal record, and they told me that I was going to be a great runner someday,” he recalls. “Now I walk through that same facility on my way to practice every day and I often think about what they said.” Maybe it was chance, maybe it was meant to be, but four years after that prophetic day, Lindgren became a proud member of the track and field and cross country teams for St. Olaf College.
Maggie Harper was just a ninth grader when she was asked to step up and play an important role on the 2008 MPA girl’s golf team. The team had never won a conference or section title in the 20 years since girl’s golf began at MPA in 1988. But 2008 would be different, and Harper proved she was up for the task. In a season in which she would be named the team’s rookie of the year, Harper finished as one of the top six girls for the class A state champion Panthers.
There was a time, long before national championships and the Olympics, that Mason Ferlic had to be coaxed into running. Ferlic, among MPA’s most decorated athletes of all-time and one of the most accomplished distance runners in Minnesota history, grew up a soccer player. It wasn’t until his sophomore year of high school that he truly focused on cross country running and track and field. When he did, it was lights out for the competition.
At MPA, the last name Bourne at MPA is synonymous with cross country running, track and field, and Nordic skiing. Kristin and Kim Bourne dominated the competition in those sports from 2007-2013, and younger brother Matt continued the family tradition before graduating in 2019.
In an era where three sport athletes are increasingly rare, Morgan Emmans proved to be the exception to the rule. Emmans earned 12 varsity letters in volleyball, basketball and softball, playing just about everything for the Panthers.
Sometime before her junior golf season, Natalie Lansing realized she had big shoes to fill. Her older sister, Olivia, had graduated two years earlier after dominating the class A girl’s golf scene and was playing collegiately for Drake University. Filling those shoes meant Lansing had to make good on some lofty goals of her own. MPA had never won a section team championship in girl’s golf and she was out to change that.
Tri-Metro Conference champions, section 4A champions, state qualifiers – MPA’s 2010 boys soccer team will go down as one of the Panthers’ all-time great teams and midfielder Nick Campanelli ’11 was the glue that held them together.