Boys cross country: Williamson steps up for Vernon Hills in 2A
There were a lot of positives for Lake County's boys cross country teams Saturday afternoon as runners attacked the 3-mile Detweiller Park course at the 69th annual boys cross country state meet.
Vernon Hills sophomore Shane Williamson proved that he will be a force to be reckoned with for years to come as Williamson placed third in Class 2A in 14:37 to smash his previous best time by a whopping 17 seconds.
Yorkville captured back-to-back state championships with 105 points to outdistance second-place squad Mahomet-Seymour (134 points), third-place Illiana Christian (172), and fourth-place Springfield (187).
The race for fifth place was a real dogfight as Metamora (203) barely held off Grayslake Central (204) in sixth, and Vernon Hills (205) in seventh in an epic battle that went down to the wire. Deerfield placed eighth with 233 points.
The Rams have their own "super sophomore" in Jack Aho, who placed 11th in 14:54 to improve his best time ever by 12 seconds.
Grayslake Central's best finish in school history had been its 17th last fall so the Rams really showed dramatic improvement this time around.
Junior Jack Battaglia was Grayslake Central's No. 2 runner Saturday in 37th place followed closely by senior teammate Max Brunk in 45th.
The Rams' top seven also included junior John Girmscheid (89th), freshman Eli Minsky (96th), senior Suneed Ahmed (109th), and junior Danny Vincent (113th).
After playing soccer as a freshman, Aho has made a huge impact on the Grayslake Central program in his first season on the cross country scene.
"For a kid in his first season of cross country he's already racing like a senior and the sky is the limit for him," said Grayslake Central coach Jimmy Centella, who is in his sixth season. "Everybody ran a personal best time today and that's all a coach can ask for in the most important race of the year."
The Rams only finished 10 points behind Vernon Hills in the powerful Kaneland sectional last weekend so everyone knew the push for the top five places or so was going to be very close with such a huge field of runners competing downstate.
With some great leadership coming back next season, Centella is very optimistic that the Rams can continue to shine in the pressure-packed state series.
"We only lose our No. 3 and No. 6 runners to graduation," Centella said. "We're looking to hopefully improve on our finish next year if we can stay healthy and work hard."
Yorkville's dynamic twin duo of senior twins Jake (14:30) and Luke Hoffert (14:31) finished 1-2 in the race with Williamson easily holding off fourth-place finisher Alex Keeble (14:49) of Mahomet-Seymour by 12 seconds.
The Cougars also got an all-state (top 25) performance from senior Tyler Smith in 20th. Williamson should be the top contender to win the Class 2A state title in 2015.
"I'm very happy about finishing third, and the team did well too," said Williamson, who jumped all the way up from his 27th place finish in the state as a freshman. "Everything that coach (Mark Whitney) has given us for training has allowed us to run our best times today."
Senior Rob Williams was Vernon Hills' third runner in 66th place followed by sophomore Tim Krashevsky in 94th, junior Alex Geier in 98th, junior Trevor Moyers in 105th, and junior Caleb Ju in 124th.
After raising the third-place trophy in 2013, the Cougars had to settle for seventh in the torridly-paced meet. Williamson's 14:37 also beat the previous school record by 11 seconds.
"We actually ran faster this year as a team than we did last year, but it's a much better field and I'm really proud of our guys," said Whitney, who is in his third season. "Shane is obviously tremendously talented, he's improved dramatically since last year, and he's certainly got the potential to be the best runner in the state next year in 2A."
Whitney was really happy with Smith's all-state showing on the big day.
"Tyler ran a personal best by six seconds, he accomplished his goal of being all-state and he ran the best race of his life today," added Whitney.
In Class 3A, all signs pointed toward an epic battle for the title between McHenry senior Jesse Reiser and Conant senior Zach Dale. And the race proved to be instant classic.
Reiser and Dale separated from a cluster of five and locked horns in the final 800 meters, with Reiser using one final surge with 400 meters remaining to secure the state championship in 14 minutes, 10 seconds at Detweiller Park in Peoria.
Dale couldn't match Reiser's uphill sprint, taking second in 14:20 and holding off up-and-coming Lake Zurich sophomore Matt Pereira (14:21).