Who’s That Bulldog – Brady Femling

Who’s That Bulldog? It’s senior Brady Femling, a member of the boys’ cross country team. Brady is the son of Anne and Travis Lester and Bob and Amanda Femling.

Brady is not your typical veteran runner as a senior in high school he just completed his first and only season on the Bulldogs’ team. He says, “I played football through middle school and up until last year, but I wasn’t playing very much. Coach (Eric) Townsend recruited me hard for cross country and so did a lot of my friends. They figured I’d be good at it, and it turns out I was. I’m very happy I made the switch.”

“The hardest part was not knowing the courses like everyone else did,” he says. “It also took me a while to figure out how to run a 5K. My first one was rough! It’s hard to know what pace to run at. I’m used to running 400 and 800 meters in track, so it’s definitely the farthest I’ve ever run in a race.”

Brady says he enjoys the simplicity of cross country. “We’re all doing the same thing. Nobody is in different events or playing different positions. We all just run the same thing every day.” He admits that what often crosses his mind during a race is how much he wants to be done. “It’s fun, but it’s still nice to be done. I also like how I hear my friends cheering for me along the way.”

He attended his first and only state cross country meet this year. “It was exciting. I knew going into State that our goal was to place as a team, and I knew I probably was not going to place individually, but that didn’t matter,” he says. “We wanted to place as a team.” Milbank finished in seventh place, just one place from reaching the podium.

As one of the seniors on the team, Brady automatically became a role model, but he says his teammate, Zippy Bock, was the main leader. “He has been around the team a lot longer. I enjoyed having him as the leader, but, I also chimed in to help keep the younger ones from running in the middle of the road or to keep them quiet when they needed to be.”

Brady is active in track, wrestling, baseball, band, Education Rising, and has been a blood drive coordinator. He is involved with his youth group at American Lutheran Church. After school, he works at Taco Johns. Somehow he squeezes in some time to hang out with friends, go cruising, play Minecraft, eat pizza or McDonalds, and go to the movies.

He hasn’t settled on a college for next year, but says Valley City State is a possibility, and that he might run on their team. He was a cadet teacher this year, and plans to major in history education. “I’ve had good history teachers along the way.,” he says. “I also like the idea of being a coach and a teacher. Coaching is a big factor in deciding which school I’ll attend. I want to coach anything, except basketball.”

Until then, he’ll enjoy the rest of his days at MHS, “Being a Bulldog and wearing that uniform is great. I like to represent Milbank, he says,” It’s a good school and everyone knows us. I’m proud of that.”

Photo by VPD Studio