IHSA Regional Results: Anna Heads to Sectionals
October 26, 2024
Saturday was a beautiful, fall morning at Katherine Legge Memorial Park. Other than freshman Lucy Wang, the entire team has run multiple races on the famous, hilly course at KLM. The home-course advantage showed as it was clear every girl gave everything that had. While the team was not expecting to advance to next weekend's Sectional race, Anna Wilcox was hoping to advance as an individual.
After Anna reached her goal of earning All-Conference honors last week at the WSC Gold race at O'Brien Park in Downers Grove, her next goal was to advance to Sectionals by finishing as one of the top-five individuals not on an advancing team at the IHSA Regional race. Anna was sitting as the fourth individual runner for most of the race, and used her speed and toughness to pass two runners in the final 800 meters to finish as the second individual runner with a personal record of 20:11 in 23rd place. Anna will run at KLM again next week for a chance to meet her ultimate season goal of qualifying for State.
As the only senior running on the Regional team, Andy Esposito knew going into the race that this was likely her last high school race. After nearly qualifying for State last season, an injury in the late summer set Andy's training back to start this season. Andy worked hard and fought her way back, though, and ran her first race of the season at the Richard Spring Invite at Detweiller Park on September 21 starting with a time of 22:02. Andy ended up setting her season P.R. at 21:36 at the Pat Savage Invite and nearly eclipsed it with a phenomenal Regional race at KLM, finishing in 47th place with a time of 21:50. Andy has been a great senior leader on the team and set expectations high not just for how to train, but how to treat your teammates as sisters.
Junior Tree Koepfle only ran four meets this season after an early-season injury also set her season off track. She made her debut at Addison Trail on September 24 running a time of 24:42. Tree improved quickly, though, and ran P.R.'s from then on out including lifetime P.R.s of 22:39 at conference last week and a major P.R. of 21:57 at KLM today. Tree is going to be a force to be reckoned with next season as one of our top returners.
Lucy Wang has proven herself tough the entire season. As the only freshman running with the varsity team, and the only freshman in general for most of the season, Lucy pushed herself to be the best she could be and keep up with her more experienced teammates. After Lucy's first three-mile race at the Mike Kuharic Invite on September 7, she ran a P.R. in every race except one, including her final 22:28 P.R. at Regionals. Lucy improved immensely in a short amount of time and should do some big things for Hinsdale South over the next three years.
Sophomore Emma Koehler finished her season only 20 seconds away from her P.R. of 22:33 that she set on September 24 at Addison Trail. During practice, Emma consistently trained with Anna and knows how to work hard and do what she needs to do to improve. While the season didn't end with anyone other than Anna advancing to the Sectional race, Emma's work ethic during practice is eventually going to pay off for her.
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