Away Meet at Elmwood Park Recap

AWAY MEET AT ELMWOOD PARK

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

SPLITS | MILE SPLITS | UPDATED FINISH TIMES

PHOTO ALBUM (thanks Jake Juska and Jasper Requiron!)

On an unexpectedly warm day, we travelled up to Elmwood Park for meet against the aforementioned school as well as St. Joseph's. Upon arrival, however, we found out that St. Joseph's was not going to attend after all, so the triangular instead became a dual against Elmwood Park. Almost every year since the 1979 season, we have run a dual meet against Elmwood Park. From Westmont's inception in 1974 until the 2005-06 school year, Westmont and Elmwood Park were long-standing conference rivals until we moved to the Interstate 8 Conference for the 2006-07 school year.

Although it's been nearly ten years since our move to the Interstate 8, we've continued to run dual meets with Elmwood Park, switching off from year to year. Last year, we hosted; this year it was their turn to host.

For the most part, the course was the same except for a small change: The start now faces northeast towards the street, rather than south towards the school's athletic complex. Otherwise, the course was virtually exactly the same as the last time we ran it in 2013.

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GIRLS RACE: LADIES PREVAIL IN CLOSE BATTLE TO WIN BY ONE POINT, 28-29

Nine of our Sentinel ladies toed the line for the first of two races on the afternoon. We weren't sure what to expect from Elmwood Park -- we had no idea coming in what they had on their team. Well, as it turned out, they have two pretty good front runners, two more good runners, but they are lacking a fifth runner.

In the first mile Elmwood Park's top two girls were leading, but Halle was close behind. Further back was a duo of our Sentinel ladies -- Lisa and Peyton -- battling a second duo from Elmwood Park. Then the Westmont pack came through -- Brittany, Lily, Frankie and Hannah, and Ashley, and Katie weren't far behind. By the time the ladies completed their second loop for their second mile, Halle had broken up Elmwood's top two and moved up to second place, which is where she came through at the finish. That second place finish--really, all of our finish positions today--proved to be critical, and you'll see why I say that soon. Halle went under 20:00 for the second time this season, posting a 19:56.

Behind Halle's second place finish, Lisa and Peyton had built a small lead on Elmwood Park's second duo. Lisa led most of the way to the finish but ran out of gas at the very last moment, with Peyton passing her for fourth place, allowing Lisa to settle for fifth. Both ladies posted identical 21:17 finishing times. After Elmwood Park's second duo finished 6th and 7th, the Westmont pack closed the book on Elmwood Park, taking 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, and 14th places.

Brittany led that pack's charge to an 8th place finish in 22:42, followed by Frankie who finished 9th in 23:07, and a few steps back was Hannah in 10th in 23:15, and another few steps back was Lily in 11th in 23:22. Ashley -- who ran the last mile and a half of the race with a nasty bee sting on the back of her shoulder, this coming a day after she got stung in the hand by a wasp -- came home 12th in 24:42. Katie dropped 17 seconds off her previous best time this season, finishing 14th in 26:20.

Now, I mentioned that all of our ladies' finishing places were critical -- and here's why: We ended up winning this meet by just one point. If any one of our ladies finishes in a different position than they did today, we lose this meet by a point. That's the strength of Elmwood Park's front four, but also the strength of our depth in our 4/5/6/7/8/9 runners. 

Our ladies came to race today, and they came away with the victory. There's still much to work on before postseason rolls around, but we'll definitely take it. The ladies' dual meet record on the season now moves to 6-1. Nicely done, ladies - congratulations on a hard-fought, well-deserved victory!

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BOYS RACE: BOYS GET SHUT OUT BY ELMWOOD PARK, LOSE 15-48

After the ladies prevailed in a close battle, our boys were hoping to do the same against Elmwood Park today. However, shortly before the race the boys' task got harder, as we held Jasper out of this race as a precaution. Hopefully, Jasper will be back running quickly.

Unfortunately, that was not to be the case: Elmwood Park shut us out: They swept the first five spots en route to a perfect 15 score to our 48. Paul Gordon, in 17:43, took sixth place and managed to prevent an Elmwood Park 1-7 sweep. We've won a few meets in the past with perfect 15 scores -- including boys Conference in 2006, and girls conference in 2010 -- but this defeat today stung. It's been a long time since we've been beaten like that.

I'll be blunt regarding the boys race: Today was certainly not our best race as a team. This is not to say that every member of the team had a bad race -- far from it, actually: There were several PR's set on the boys side. Tom Dea, Robbie Burns, Jake Dooley, Connor Alessi, Brandon Abington, Jacob Nader, and Ben Padgitt all set PR's. Congratulations on those PRs, guys. But while the PR's are nice, the fact remains that we just didn't come to race today as a team, and we paid the price for it in the form of a 15-48 defeat.

But we will learn from this meet. Better now than during the state series next month. It is a reminder our young team that while we have a lot of potential, we still have a long way to go. There's still four weeks until Conference, but we will use every bit of that four weeks to improve ourselves and be ready to go come postseason.

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LOOKING AHEAD: AURORA CENTRAL CATHOLIC "CHARGER CLASSIC"

Back to work tomorrow. We will be in action on Saturday at the Aurora Central Catholic "Charger Classic", which is a meet that is run on one of our favorite courses -- and one of the fastest courses in the state besides Detweiller Park -- Oakhurst Forest Preserve. That course also happens to be the course that we will run our Regional meet at. Then, next Tuesday, we'll host our final home meet of the season, the affectionally named "Westmont 500", in the words of Lisle's head coach, Ken Jakalski.

Hard to believe that in a week and a half it will be time to turn the calendar to October. Postseason is coming up fast. Are you doing what you need to do to improve and be a better runner each day? The little things now will pay huge benefits come late October and early November!