After the Montgomery County girls track team won its seventh straight Eastern Missouri Conference title on May 1, it dedicated its championship to one person – head coach Stephanie Finke.

Finke, who is in her 16th year as MCHS coach, is battling breast cancer. All of the MCHS athletes wore T-shirts that read Running For Finke at the conference meet that was held at Jim Blacklock Field.

“She’s a great coach and she’s battling hard in what she’s going through,” MCHS junior Samantha Turner said. “It sucks that she’s going through this, but she’s showing up every day and putting her best foot forward for all of us girls and doing everything in her power to be a good coach and keep us going through conference and districts and trying to get everybody ready for what’s to come.”

The MCHS girls scored 144 points and won the meet by 15 points. They were trailing by eight points with five events remaining.

The Wildcats won their 10th conference championship in the girls division, nine of them under Finke, who took over the program in 2011.

“(Assistant) Coach (Chasity) Rodgers and I talked about that quite a bit. We always expect to be in the running,” Finke said. “Whether we finish or not remains to be seen, but the girls have gotten used to it, which is a good thing. I kind of created that habit of winning conference. But they still have to perform. We can do a lot on paper, but at the end of the day, it’s up to them to show up when the gun goes off.”

The MCHS girls won championships in four events. Turner set meet records in her victories in the shot put (38-5) and discus (130-3), sophomore Emma Rodgers won the 800 in 2:27.65 and freshman Trinity Brown came out on top in the pole vault in 8-0.50. Turner swept the throwing events at the EMO meet for the second year in a row and Rodgers won her second straight EMO title in the 800.

Finke said she was impressed with the effort from Brown, who also placed seventh in the 800 and helped the 1,600-meter relay team finish second.

“If she continues to work, she can be pretty special in the next three years,” Finke said. “She’s going to be part of some pretty big teams.”

Turner returned to action at the EMO meet after missing two weeks due to a back injury.

“It feels great to come out and compete, especially after being off for two weeks,” Turner said. “It feels good to come back and get a win that could help the team secure conference.”

With the seventh straight EMO title, the girls track team now has the third-most conference championships at MCHS, trailing volleyball (12) and football (21).

“None of us girls want to let that tradition die,” said Turner, who helped the softball team win its first EMO crown in program history last fall. “We’re all here every day putting our best foot forward, especially at EMO. All of these girls worked so hard to earn this again. It was great to come out and experience this and just have a good time.”

The Wildcats scored points in all but one event (300-meter hurdles) in the girls division.

“It was definitely a team effort,” Turner said. “All of us knew it was going to be a tough battle to win conference. There’s great competition in our conference. But for all of us girls to go out and put our best forward was great.”

The MCHS boys finished fourth with 93 points. Junior Lafe McCurdy was the team’s top finisher, placing second in the pole vault. Bowling Green won the team championship with 162 points.

“They didn’t finish quite as high as I hoped, but they have to learn how to get over that hump,” Finke said. “They’re kind of stuck at being right here in the middle and they just have to figure out how to get over that hump of trying to make a push for winning. Our conference is stacked on the boys side. It always is. I don’t have a ton of boys in the numbers part of it. You look at Wright City and Bowling Green and they have twice the kids that I have.”

The Wildcats will compete in the Class 3, District 4 championship meet on May 9 at Centralia High School. MCHS qualified 11 athletes out of districts last year, six of them are back this year. They are Turner, Rodgers, sophomore Mieka Ray, juniors Kaylee Daume, Aubrey Janes and Jillian Weekley.

“I’m ready to get back out there,” Turner said. “I know a lot of these girls are, too. We’re ready to compete and we’re going to do everything we can to make sure we get some girls going to state and do our best.”

Finke was diagnosed with breast cancer several months ago. In April, Chasity Rodgers came up with the idea of creating the T-shirts in honor of the longtime coach.

“She knows I hate that stuff,” Finke said. “She tries to do that without me knowing, but that doesn’t ever work. I do appreciate it. I know they like to do a lot of things for me. It’s great to see that support from them on that side of it. But at the end of the day, this is for them. I’ll deal with my stuff and I want them to be able to do that stuff for themselves, not necessarily for me. But if it motivates them, then I will use anything that will motivate them.”

Finke said she was looking forward to coming back for another spring as coach despite receiving the devastating news.

“I’m not going to stop doing the things that I do,” Finke said. “The more I do, the better I’d be.”