Meet Recaps - Home Meet #2, Peoria, Plano, & Bureau Valley

MEET RECAPS:
Home Meet #2 (vs. ACC, IC and Nazareth) - September 6, 2016
Peoria "First to the Finish" Invitational - September 10, 2016
Away Meet at Plano (vs. Plano, Sandwich & Somonauk) - September 13, 2016
Bureau Valley "Storm" Invitational - September 17, 2016

Our apologies for not getting these meet recaps up regularly as the meets happen. The season is quickly rolling along! Here is are some quick synopsis of what went down at the four meets mentioned above:

Home Meet #2 (vs. ACC, IC, and Nazareth) - Tuesday, September 6:

The second home meet of the season for the Sentinels was a very hot, very humid, and very windy affair. Unfortunately, in the girls race we had a couple of runners who were forced to drop out for a variety of reasons as well as holding out Hannah due to injury. This resulted in the Lady Sentinels -- who were led by Lisa Niemiec, Lily Arndt, and Frankie Fabry, who went 6-7-8 in a field of over 50 runners -- suffering tough losses to two very good Class 2A teams in Aurora Central Catholic and Nazareth, but picking up a win against an incomplete Immaculate Conception team. The Lady Sentinels dropped to 2-2 on the season.

The Sentinel men, on the other hand, claimed a 1-2-3 sweep, courtesy of Matt Gedraitis, Sam Asa, and Jasper Requiron in their race, resulting in a one point win over Aurora Central Catholic and therefore beating all three teams in the meet, despite being shorthanded. The Sentinels won the meet with 42 points to Aurora Central Catholic's 43. The men also beat Immaculate Conception and Nazareth. The men's record stands at 3-1 after the triple win on September 6.

Peoria "First to the Finish" Invitational - Saturday, September 10:

On September 10, the varsity teams made the trip to Peoria to run on the state final course at Detweiller Park. Usually, this course is one of the fastest cross country courses in the nation, and has also affectionally been called "PRoria" due to the large number of personal records that are set on this course in any one of the meets that are run on this course.

That was not to be the case this year. In the first nine days of September, Peoria -- and in particular, Detweiller Park -- received over five inches of rain, leading to a very soggy course. It did not help matters that the night before the First to the Finish Invitational, there was a college cross country meet run on the same course layout. On top of all that, Mother Nature decided to rain again after the conclusion of the college meet.

That meant that last Saturday's meet at First to the Finish was an extremely muddy affair -- but, everyone was going to be running in the exact same conditions as we were.

Halle Nash led the way for the ladies with an outstanding 6th place finish to earn a medal. Her twin sister, Peyton Nash, also earned  Overall -- for all teams involved -- times were well off from what they were last year. The ladies finished 6th as a team, behind the efforts of Lisa Niemiec, Lily Arndt, Frankie Fabry, Ashley Eiermann, and Katie Schultz.

On the boys side, we were shorthanded by not having Kyle (who was still recovering from an illness of very unfortunate timing). Matt Gedraitis led the Sentinel men with a 24th place finish to earn a medal of his own. Sam Asa, Jasper Requiron, Jason Eiermann, Jake Dooley, and Connor Alessi rounded out the Sentinel attack. 

We will return to Detweiller prepared for a fast race in November. But we have a lot of work to do before then.

Away Meet at Plano (vs. Plano, Sandwich and Somonauk boys) -- Tuesday, September 13:

After a somewhat disappointing meet in Peoria on Saturday, we traveled to Plano on Tuesday for a small conference preview with two teams in Plano and Sandwich, along with Somonauk's boys team.

The ladies dominated the race on a fast course. Behind Sandwich's stud lead runner, our top five of Halle Nash, Peyton Nash, Lisa Niemiec, Frankie Fabry, and Lily Arndt went 2-3-4-5-6 to shut the door on any competition and roll to two more victories on the year along with a boatload of season PRs. Katie Schultz, Mollie Johnson, Whittney Ruiz, and Anita Vazquez also ran well. The ladies improved to 4-2 on the season.

In the boys race, with Kyle back in the lineup, the boys rolled to three easy wins over Plano, Sandwich and Somonauk. The boys went 1-2-3-4-6. The order of finish was Matt Gedraitis, followed by Sam Asa, Jasper Requiron, Jason Eiermann and Kyle Casper. Kyle fought tooth and nail with a Somonauk runner for 5th place but ran out of real estate room to overtake him in the final stretch. That was the only reason why the boys did not score a perfect 15 on Tuesday. The boys also chalked up tons of season PRs on the fast course. The remainder of the boys team also ran very well on Tuesday. The boys moved to 6-1 on the season after the triple win in Plano. 

Bureau Valley Storm Invitational - Saturday, September 17:

After a hard week of practice, the Sentinels made another dark and early bus departure to travel to Bureau Valley for the Storm Invitational. This year, there was a major change - the open race was dropped so there were only three races on the day - Frosh Soph boys, Varsity Girls and Varsity Boys.

In the Frosh-Soph Boys race, Jason Eiermann led the way with a ninth place finish on the 4 kilometer (2.5 mile) course at Bureau Valley, running the second fastest Frosh-Soph boys time in Westmont history, behind only Anthony Alessi. Dominic Santore also had a breakout race, earning a 20th place finish. Elias Hanba, still ailing after being forced to miss Peoria last week, ran well. All three runners are now in the top ten fastest times and runners lists for Frosh-Soph boys for Bureau Valley after their races on Saturday. Ben Padgitt and Mark Naom contributed to the Sentinels' attack, which led to a fifth place finish.

That was followed by the girls varsity race. We were shorthanded by two runners on the girls side - Lily was unavailable for today's meet, and we made a last minute decision to hold out Ashley as well due to injury concerns. Hopefully, Ashley will be back running meets this week. Halle Nash, Peyton Nash, Lisa Niemiec, and Frankie Fabry all finished in the top 40 places. Halle (5th), Peyton (27th), and Lisa (28th) all earned trophies.

Unfortunately, without Lily able to be at the meet today, the lack of a strong 5th runner hurt us. Hannah Abbatacola was our fifth runner on the day, running in her first meet in two weeks. Hopefully Hannah's injury issues are under control, and that she can concentrate on getting back into race shape for the remainder of the season and postseason. The ladies finished in 8th place overall out of a field of 25 teams.

In the boys race, we ended up not scoring as a team due to some reasons out of our control. Congratulations go to Matt Gedraitis, who earned a 13th place trophy, and to Sam Asa who claimed the final trophy on offer by finishing in 30th. Kyle Casper and Tom Dea ran strong races and will play a part in our success later in the season.

We have five more meets before Conference (hard to believe, but it's true!):

We are done with the super-early departures for meets. All of our bus departure times are at 7 am or later from here on out.

Tuesday, September 20th -- We will be at home against Elmwood Park. This will be our homecoming meet this week. We hope to see many Sentinel fans out there supporting the cross country teams as part of this week's festivities. There may be another team there (we're not sure), but the tradition of running a dual meet against Elmwood Park each season dates back to 1979 with only minor interruptions. Girls race at 4:30 pm, the guys will follow at 5 pm.

Saturday, September 24th -- We head to Oakhurst Forest Preserve for the Charger Classic, hosted by Aurora Central Catholic. This is a fast 2.9 mile course, and will serve as our "homecoming" invitational meet this year. This is traditionally the course that we run on for the Regional meet. We hope to see many of our parents and fellow students out at Oakhurst Forest Preserve on Saturday morning to support the Sentinel cross country teams!

Tuesday, September 27th -- We will host our home schedule finale, with the annual "Westmont 500". So named, courtesy of Lisle Head Coach Ken Jakalski (an avid NASCAR fan), due to the large amount of left turns we have on our course, we will host Lisle, Plano, Seneca, and Walther Christian. Girls will race at 4:30 pm, the guys will follow at 5 pm.

Saturday, October 1st -- After Lisle pays a visit to our home course, we will return the favor by making the short trip over to Community Park, our home away from home, for the first of three times in the month of October for the annual "Mane Event". This meet, made up of 1A, 2A, and some smaller 3A schools will serve as our first look at what will be our Conference and Sectional courses. 

Tuesday, October 4th -- We head back to Plano for the annual Ross Greiter Invitational. Although it is on a Tuesday, anywhere from eight to twelve schools will attend this meet. The girls will race at 4:30 pm, the guys will follow at 5:15 pm.