Liberal’s Lapinski Runs Away with Pancake Race

It was a tight race around the corner of 5th and Kansas.  It was close around the corner of 5th and Lincoln.  But Maggie Lapinski ran away down the home stretch with win the Liberal leg of the International Pancake Day Race.  She ran the race in 61.06.  Allyson Nondorf was second and Dallas Culwell was third.  The rest of the field included Tessy Barnett, Kitty Lum, Stephanie Conde, Brooke Cedillo, Nancy Koerner, Lindsay Claus, and Gaby Amparan.  The race occurred with a temperature of 53 and sunny skies.

Lapinski is a 4th grade teacher at Cottonwood Intermediate School in Liberal.  She says she could hear her students cheering her on toward the finish line.  She is also a cross country and track coach at Eisenhower Middle School.  She ran track and North Central College in Naperville, Illinois.  and is from Canton, New York.

The Liberal leg of the traditional 415 yard S shaped curve comes after an Associated Press report that Olney’s race was marred by a technological glitch.  No official time was recorded for Olney winn Kaia Larkas.

Olney had won four of the past five in the series and Liberal led 37-29 with one no contest coming into the 68th Pancake Day Race. This year’s race is the second no contest in Pancake Day history.  The other occurred when a  truck blocked the course in Olney in 1980.