For the Varsity race, we were missing a couple of our guys, so we put together a squad of 5. Two juniors and three sophomores. Obviously, everyone needs score with only five runners. And our guys came thru nicely.
Sophomore Mateo Ramiro-Garcia led the way with a 16th place finish overall in 16:30. Junior Luke Atzman finished as our number two in 28th place with a time of 16:50. Jack Easterhouse, another junior, came thru next in 40th place in 17:18. Two sophomores closed out the scoring with Jackson Canellis finishing in 45th (17:31) and Myles Jacquez taking 55th in 17:48.
Overall, the Eagles placed 5th with 181 points. Lyons Township won the meet with 76 points.
Full varsity results
With our 3 top sophomores running in the varsity race, we were also running a 5 man team on the soph level. Again, we needed these guys to come thru - which they did big time!
Ben Lewandowski continued his incredible improvement over last year and battled his way to a 3rd place finish in 18:01 for the 3.1 mile distance. To give you an idea on how much progress he's made, he ran 18:24 last year for the freshman race - which is only 2.2 miles! Wow!
We had two additional top ten finishers with Jake Crotty taking 6th in 18:18 and Matthew Miller grabbing 7th in 18:30. Gavin Smalarz placed 13th in 18:52 and Noah Sims closed things out in 19:41 and 21st place.
That was good enough to earn the sophomore team championship with 46 points over West Aurora with 51.
Full sophomore results
Brayden Gaffud bided his time for the first 1/2 mile of the race, but at that point he took over and powered all the way to the finish to win in 11:52 (almost 20 seconds in front of 2nd place). Teammate Gunner Hinger grabbed 7th place in 12:51. Dylan Straka ran aggressively and nailed down 17th in 13:21, while Declan Haubenreiser closed with a big kick for 19th place in 13:23. Gavin Crotty wrapped up the scoring in 26th with a time of 13:48.
Additional freshman finishers included John Lacny in 40th place (14:14), Andy Kotecki in 71st (15:10), Andy Coleman in 96th (16:07), Ryan Schreiber in 97th (16:08), Michael Krupa in 105th (16:25), Duncan Gray in 121st (17:23) and Lucas Podoreski in 125th (17:34).
In the final team scoring, Sandburg was tied with Maine South with 62 points each. The tiebreaker comes down to the 6th place finisher for each team - with the Maine South runner finishing 4 places in front of Sandburg's John Lacny.
Full freshmen results
In the Open race, we once again ran with a team of 5 runners. James Coppinger was our top finisher in 27th place with a time of 18:50. Alex Van Alst next in 81st (20:47), Connor Wholley finished 92nd (21:09), Zee Ebert was 94th (21:15) and Aryan Patil placed 108th (21:41).
The Eagles team finished in 12th place with 307 points. Lyons Township took first with 16 points.
Full open results