#16 Seed Cotter Girls Voted Greatest MN Girls XC of All-Time

Feb 01, 2022

From left to right: Lauren Ping, Morgan Arnold, Claire Ebertowski, and Grace Ping

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After a month of voting and all the upsets imaginable, the Cotter girls as the #16 seed have been voted as the champion in our Greatest Minnesota girls cross country school of all-time bracket contest. Ten of thousands of votes have gotten us to this point and now we can revel in the success of the underdog being voted as the GOAT school for Minnesota girls.

See: Here's Why You Should Claim Your Profile On MileSplit

Voting comprised of four rounds and Cotter upset numerous teams as seen below:

Round 1	Cotter - 59.4%	vs.	Wayzata - 40.6%
Round 2	Cotter - 75.86%	vs.	Willmar - 24.14%
Semi-Finals	Cotter - 61.89%	vs.	Alexandria - 38.11%
Finals	Cotter - 94.03%	vs.	STMA - 5.97%

En route to the title they defeated the #1 seed in Wayzata, the #9 seed in Willmar, the #4 seed in Alexandria, and the #10 seed in Saint Michael-Albertville. Overall they received 39,000+ votes en route to the #16 seed upsetting everyone else.

See the final girls bracket below:

The girl's team for Cotter consisted of Lauren Ping, Grace Ping, Claire Ebertowski, Sonja Semling, and Morgan Arnold. They all overlapped at Cotter schools with all of them being 2021 graduates or later. They're average time of 18:23.32 was good enough to secure the #16 seed in the bracket, but they are spearheaded by the Ping sisters, two of Minnesota's best runners ever.

#16 Seed - Cotter

RANK	TIME	ATHLETE/TEAM	GRADE	MEET DATE PLACE
1	17:07.72	LAUREN PING Cotter Schools	2023	Nike Cross Nationals Heartland Regional 4th Nov 12, 2017
2	17:10.80	GRACE PING Cotter Schools	2021	Nike Cross Nationals Heartland Regional 2nd Nov 11, 2018
3	18:10.20	MORGAN ARNOLD Cotter Schools	2021	Nike Cross Nationals Heartland Regional 20th Nov 11, 2018
4	19:38.40	SONJA SEMLING Cotter Schools	2025	Cotter Tri 1st Sep 15, 2020
5	19:49.50	CLAIRE EBERTOWSKI Cotter Schools	2021	Nike Cross Nationals Heartland Regional 160th Nov 11, 2018

AVERAGE TIME: 18:23.32

While the Cotter girls have never won a state title, Grace Ping ran for two state titles in 2015 and 2018, and Lauren Ping had consecutive runner-up finishes at state in 2017 (behind Tierney Wolfgram) and 2018. If the Ping sisters hadn't made the move to Arizona in 2019, who knows how good they could've been in Minnesota, and with all five girls above competing at the same time.