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2021 Pat Savage Invite
October 2, 2021
The Pat Savage Invite at Niles West in Skokie was our first invitational since the Richard Spring Invite at Peoria two weeks ago. Most of the team ran season personal records at Peoria, which is where the State meet is held, and given that it is a much faster course than the course at Niles West we didn’t expect to see a lot of P.R.’s today. What we did see were a bunch of girls who ran their hearts out and are priming for the post-season that starts in two weeks with Conference.
The day started with our AAA team. Aly, Andy, and Annabella ran at 9:30 before the weather really started to heat up. Andy Esposito, who was running a three mile race for only the fourth time, ended up running a 27:52 (81st place), which wasn’t far from her Richard Spring P.R. of 27:34. Aly Motherway ran a time of 26:07 which was good enough for 62nd place. Annabella Ramirez, who has been getting stronger all season, ended up being one of the few girls to P.R. Annabella ran 23:32 to finish in 30th place.
The varsity race saw the Hornet matched up against Fenwick, which is a team we will see in the postseason. Finishing in ninth place, the girls comfortably beat Fenwick, and would have beaten fellow Regional team St. Laurence had they run a full varsity team (most of their runners were in the freshman/sophomore race). While most of Fenwick's top runners were running at a different meet, we still would have matched up well and most likely beaten them. Abby Petersen led the way for the girls as usual. She started with a 6:45 first mile and then ran two consistent miles to finish the race in 20:47 in 27th place. Elena Garcia, Charlotte Old, and Yuliya Drabchuk worked together for most of the race with Charlotte finishing in 43rd place with a time of 21:15, Elena finishing in 45th place with a time of 21:22, and Yuliya finished in 53rd place with a P.R. of 21:34. Had Charlotte and Yuliya run in the freshman/sophomore race, both would have received medals. Victoria Cius was the team’s fifth runner and finished in 67th place, just missing a P.R. with her time of 22:07. Olivia Rogers, Ava Berg, and Grace Kosiol rounded out the team finishing with times of 22:37, 23:47, and 29:34, respectively.
The final race of the day was the two-mile junior varsity race with Sam Bantz and Zoe Funk toeing the line. Sam and Zoe ran together for the first mile of the race, encouraging each other to run strong. Zoe started to break away from Sam after the first mile and passed dozens of runners in the last mile on her way to a 19:25 finish and a negative split for the second mile. Sam, who was running only her third race of the season, ran a season P.R. for two miles by running 20:13.
The girls will run next on Thursday at Lemont. Two weeks from today will be the last meet for most of the team when we run at Conference. After that, our varsity team will run at the IHSA 2A Regional at Kaneland with the goal of moving on to the IHSA 2A Sectional at Fenton and hopefully to the IHSA 2A State Championship in Peoria.
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