By Eric Hofmann

October 29, 2016

On an unseasonably warm day for late October, Midlothian Meadows was the site of the Class 3A Marist Sectional.  The course consisted of mostly grass loops, but incorporated some short sections on trails that were quite muddy.  Temperatures were in the high 60s for the races.

First up were the girls.  Mahal Schroeder took the lead from the gun, setting out at an absurdly fast pace.  Less than a mile in, she had gapped the rest of the field despite many others also starting off very hard.  At this point, the eventual first and second place finishers, Sarah Barcelona and Emily Henkel, ran together around fifteenth place.  Their patience proved beneficial.  By the second mile mark, the duo from Lyons had taken over and continued to put distance on everyone else through to the finish. 

Barcelona’s winning time of 17:39 was two seconds ahead of Henkel.  Having started off faster than usual to obtain good position going into the woods, Henkel and Barcelona both expressed concern over having so many runners ahead of them in the early stages, but their more intelligent pacing payed dividends in the end.  The battle for third was tightly contested, and Reilly Revord of Hinsdale Central kicked in ahead of Morgan Bollinger (Lockport) and Brenna Cohoon (Downers Grove South).  Six tenths of a second separated the three.  Behind them, Schroeder faded to seventh, just after Juliana Stogsdill (Plainfield North).

Team wise, Downers Grove South was the class of the field (sixty-nine points), winning over Lyons and Lockport, both of which scored 101.  With all of the teams contending for state qualifying spots having at least one individual front runner, key for the Mustangs was their depth.  After Cohoon, their other scoring runners all placed in the top twenty-four.  While DGS claimed favorite status entering the sectional, the freshman Cohoon’s top performance was a bit of a surprise.  17:52 was her fastest three mile time of the season on not the fastest of courses and it was her first time as the Mustangs’ top finisher.  Hinsdale Central and Plainfield North rounded out the state qualifying teams.

The boys, running an hour later, put on an exciting show.  Unlike the girls, the athletes who would end up in the top places were near the front from the beginning.  Danny Kilrea and Vince Zona set a fast early pace with Dylan Jacobs and Irwin Loud, Blake Evertsen trailing closely behind.  Alex Danner, Alex Pall, Jacob Ridderhoff, and Caleb Washington made up the next pack.  Halfway into the race, Kilrea surged ahead.  For the next mile, he led Jacobs by several seconds, and the others strung out behind them.  Jacobs was not finished, though, and dug in to catch Kilrea coming into the final stretch.  The Sandburg junior powered through the line to win by less than half a second in 14:25.  Loud followed in third, improving on his position relative to conference rivals Zona (fourth) and Evertsen (eighth) from the WSC-Silver meet two weeks ago.  Washington moved up to take fifth place, perhaps demonstrating the best tactics in the race, having run controlled throughout.  Downers Grove North’s Danner and Ridderhoff were sixth and seventh, leading the Trojans to the team championship.

After being a contributor on an exceptionally strong team last year, Jacobs has now emerged as a top individual, taking on a leadership role at Sandburg.  He said his older teammates in the past helped him mature as a runner, and he is trying to pass that on to the younger guys. 

Despite just missing out on the win, Kilrea felt the day was a success individually “I felt like I really pushed it today, and I got a lot of confidence.”  Zona, on the other hand, was disappointed with fourth place.  He did credit Alex Pall with a strong performance as their third man and is optimistic about Lyons’s prospects for the state meet. 

DGN head coach John Sipple said everyone contributed with a good performance today, noting that this was their first sectional win since 1949.  Having narrowly beaten Lyons in the WSC-Silver meet on October 15 by a four-point margin, they enjoyed a more comfortable victory today, fifty-four team points to eighty.  Sipple was especially please by Danner and Ridderhoff’s performances, coming in ahead of some familiar competitors like Hinsdale’s Evertsen.  Looking ahead to State, he thinks Nick Chudzik has the potential to move up and bolster the team further.  Also making the trip to Peoria will be Hinsdale Central, Sandburg, and Oak-Park River Forest.