The 22nd Annual Wheaton North Classic Flight Meet on Saturday featured 9 of the top 15 teams in the state. The format of this meet is unique in that each of the seven varsity runners race against their corresponding runner from the opposing teams. In other words, each of the #7 runners from the 25 teams run in one flight, the #6 runners in the next flight, and so on. It is a meet that rewards team depth and makes every runner’s score equally important. There are also Open Freshman, Sophomore and JV races, although no team scores are kept in these races. It was a great day for racing. The weather was sunny, temperatures were in the 60’s and the 3.02 mile course was dry and in good shape. The flight meet gives us a chance to work on some individual racing skills and adds a little variety to the racing schedule, while getting another chance to compete against the best teams and individuals in the state.
We equaled our best finish ever at this meet, finishing 4th with 42 points behind Naperville North, Wheaton North and a surprising St. Charles East team. This equaled our team finish of last year. Lauren Zumbach finished 7th in the 1st flight, a race that featured many of the top individuals in the state, in a time of 18:17. The girls subtracted 8 seconds to get their 3 mile equivalent time. Roey Hines and Ashley Soltwisch also had outstanding races, finishing 5th and 3rd respectively in times of 18:31 and 18:55. Gina Kapusta, Jenny Laser and Megan Gleason, in her first race back, all finished in the top five in their races as well, giving us six runners with top 5 finishes. Sarah Vachlon finished 13th in the 7th flight to round out the varsity scorers. Roey Hines took home the plaque as the Varsity Athlete of the Meet.
While there are no official team scores kept in the open races, we keep unofficial scores to let us know what “would have been”. In the freshman race, we swept the top 3 places with Heather Stevens, Niamh McCarthy and Holly Larsen leading the way to a 1st place finish in the 25 team field. Elaine Kuckertz, Maddie Metcalf, Catherine Bruns and Victoria Glatz all ran strong races and were top 7 finishers for the Devils, all finishing in the top 40 overall. Ariel Burks ran a particularly strong race as well, with a big time drop to finish as our 8th runner. Ariel and Holly Larsen shared the Freshman Athlete of the Meet award. In the sophomore race, Allie Emery and Margaret Cavenagh led the way for the team, finishing 26th and 28th overall. Margaret was the Soph Athlete of the Meet. The JV girls placed 4th of the 25 teams behind Wheaton North, Naperville North and LT. We were led by Jennie Kuckertz in a PR 20:16 in 11th place. Jennie and Madeleine Hines shared the Athlete of the Meet at this level. Our other top finishers included Kristina Truedson, Molly Doyle, Grace Pedersen, Madeleine Hines and Roshni Patel. Kelly Biallis had another outstanding PR race as well.
We have one meet this coming week, on Thursday at home at KLM with York. This is our final dual meet before the Conference championships and we go into this meet with dual meet records of 5-0 (varsity), 5-0 (F/S), and 4-1 (JV). The York dual is always an exciting meet and we encourage everyone to come out and support the team! The F/S race is scheduled to go off at 4:30pm, followed by Varsity and then JV. Click on ‘Directions’ for directions to the park.
Directions
