Sanders County Ledger - Your Best Source For Sanders County News

They don't all live in Sanders County now, but the current and former runners from good, old Montana county No. 35 definitely made their presence felt in the annual Missoula Marathon Sunday.

Leading that list of Sanders County do-gooders, Jacob Naegeli, who was once a star runner for the Thompson Falls Blue Hawk high school team but now lives in St. Paul, Minn., finished tenth overall in the Men's Open race and second in the Men's 25-29 age class with a time of 2 hours, 42 minutes, 50.60 seconds.

Naegeli has now finished in the top ten of the Missoula Marathon a remarkable four times, winning tenth in 2014, third in 2015 and tenth again in 2016. After graduating from Thompson Falls, Naegeli honed his running skill to a sharp edge at Earlham College in Richmond, Ind., where he ran cross country.

Coming in not far behind Naegeli Sunday, Parker McConnell, who just graduated from TFHS this past spring, strode in in a very impressive 14th place overall with a time of 2:45:52.55, setting a new Missoula Marathon record in the 19 and under age class for the race.

Not long ago a coach and teacher at TFHS, Andrew Gideon, who now enjoys those roles as an educator in Eureka, finished in the No. 248 position out of over 1,500 runners entered in the event.

In the women's open marathon, Natalie Bond of Dixon placed 33rd out

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of over 800 runners in that race, in a fine time of 3:38:58.76, and Whitney Tanner-Spurr of Plains, running in her first full marathon ever, came in 347th.

A flock of Sanders County women competed in the half-marathon. Rachel Ribeiro, a rising junior at TFHS, and Charlotte Milling of Thompson Falls were the top finishers from this area, coming in 248th and 304th, respectively.

PARKER MCCONNELL

Sarah Stover and Kate Baxter of Thompson Falls, Suzanne VonHeeder, Shannon Benson and Lisa Rice of Plains, Nancy McIntyre of Trout Creek, Louse Chandler of Heron and Janet Ivers of Libby (but formerly of Thompson Falls) also all ran in and finished the half-marathon.

Seth Gibbs of Plains and Russell Kujala, now going to college in Dillon but formerly of Plains, were the only Sanders County men in that half-marathon.

Sarah Naegeli, the mother of Jacob and a long-time cross country and running coach at TFHS, said she ran in the 5K. She also told the Ledger that Tony Banovich, the current director of Run Wild Missoula and one of the main men behind the now-famous Missoula Marathon, and also a former coach in Sanders County at Plains, had several of his grandkids running in the youth races Sunday, but results from those races are not published online.