You take it on faith, you take it to the heart.
The waiting is the hardest part.
Tom Petty
There was a lot riding on this one.
After missing the State Meet last year for the first time since 2002, the team was determined to make it back to Detweiller in 2023. With one lone senior (Grant Giblin) on the State squad, we knew we didn't have a lot of experience heading into the championship portion of our season. While Grant was coming back after finishing 6th overall at the 2022 State Meet, the remaining 13 underclassmen on the roster had never run at State. Not one of them - ever!
So entering an IHSA Sectional with 9 ranked teams - and only 7 teams would move on - meant we had a HUGE challenge in front of us. Most of those ranked teams had been beating up on us all season long. At Peoria Notre Dame, we lost to Neuqua Valley by 353 points, West Aurora by 326 and Hinsdale Central by 189. But we also knew our guys had been making steady progress throughout the season. We had a group that was tenacious and motivated and one that could handle pressure well. So there was a quiet confidence as the week progressed from Regionals.
Adding to the challenge was the fact that Hinsdale Central was hosting the meet and that meant it would take place at Katherine Legge Memorial Park. On an ideal day, that's a tough course. Coupling that with cold, wet & windy conditions would only make things more difficult. The Hinsdale crew did fantastic work to get things ready for the race, but due to the weather, there were still plenty of soft, wet, slippery & muddy spots.
I'm generally not very nervous at these races, but I did feel a bit relieved when the starting gun finally signaled the start of the race. That was followed by a bit of annoyance when the starter fired again calling for the runners to stop. From our perspective farther down the course, we couldn't tell what had happened. A re-start is never a great thing for the runners who had their adrenaline pumping at the start and now have to settle themselves back down and recalibrate. I didn't find out until after the race was over that the reason for the call back was that one of our runners had fallen during the start. So thanks to the officials who noticed what happened and made the correct decision!
That second loop around Katherine Legge is when things really start to happen. At that point, you're generally either moving up or falling back. Our guys were hanging tough. When they hit the 2.5 mile mark, the Eagles were right where they needed to be - Grant in 9th, Luke 23, Mateo 27, Brayden 37 and Jack in 70th. All they needed to do was to close the deal.
And that's exactly what they did. Grant kicked in to grab 7th place in 15:29. Luke hung in to finish in 25th (15:59) and Mateo moved up to 26th (16:02). Brayden battled his way to 38th in 16:18. And then there was Jack - storming up the finish stretch to move up to 63rd place in 16:41. Jackson Canellis placed 83rd in 17:02 and Myles Jacquez took 96th in 17:23.
We were pretty certain that would be enough to finish in the top 7 teams - but the final results took longer than we wanted. In the end, the Eagles got what they needed with a 5th place team finish with 151 points. They came within 8 points of Neuqua Valley (143) in 4th place and edged out Riverside-Brookfield (157) and Hinsdale Central (173). Downers Grove North took the Sectional title with 49 points.
In the afterglow of a successful meet, things felt back to normal. It's going to be awesome fun to take this young team down to Detweiller Park to race the State Meet on Saturday.
Go Eagles!
Complete results