MSHSL History Capsule: Maria Hauger
Posted: Monday, September 15, 2025 - 9:00 AM
Shakopee's Maria Hauger, right, won four consecutive Class AA cross country championships, including this dramatic duel with Alexandria's Jamie Piepenburg during her junior season in 2011. (Photo courtesy of www.twincities.com)
As an eighth-grader in 2008, Shakopee High School’s Maria Hauger was running cross country for the first time. To wrap up her inaugural season, she placed ninth in the Class AA field during the Minnesota State High School League’s Cross Country State Meet at St. Olaf College in Northfield.
She vowed then that anything less than a championship finish was unacceptable. She wrote reminders to herself and constantly visualized that goal as coming to fruition.
It did.
From nail-biting finishes to dominant margins, Hauger became the first Class AA runner to win four consecutive state crowns, a mark that still stands. Carrie Tollefson of Dawson-Boyd/Lac qui Parle Valley won five consecutive championships from 1990-1994. The titles in 1991 and 1994 were in Class AA while the others were Class A crowns.
In 2009, Hauger held off Elk River senior Emma Bates in the 4,000-meter race to win by less than a second. A year later, it was the first of two dandy duels between Hauger and Alexandria’s Jamie Piepenburg. That first season, Hauger won by nearly 15 seconds.
But in 2011, an incredible finish down the stretch went Hauger’s way. She had a time of 14:04.1 and Piepenburg was seven-tenths of a second behind. To complete her League prep cross country career, Hauger cruised to a 13-second victory over Wayzata’s Anna French in 2012. Shortly after, she finished third nationally in the Foot Locker Invitational, which was run at 5,000 meters.
Hauger was an advocate for the 5,000-meter distance, but that would not be implemented in Minnesota until 2015.
In the spring during her prep career, Hauger also won four state championships during the Track and Field season. During her junior year, she won distance running’s “Triple Crown:” cross country, and the 1,600- and 3,200-meter races at the track and field state meet.
Hauger ran collegiately for the University of Virginia and was selected the Atlantic Coast Conference Freshman of the Year in 2013. Chronic sacral injuries, however, ended her collegiate career.
She is currently an award-winning Exercise Physiologist in the Twin Cities.
