Track and field: Pendergast knows her role Friday

The last time Naperville North's Judy Pendergast ran at a premier event, she set a state record.

What will she do at Friday's annual Gus Scott Track & Field Invitational at Naperville North? That will be revealed - but we do know what events she'll run.

Huskies distance coach Dan Iverson said the Harvard-bound Pendergast will join Emory Griffin, Sarah Schmitt and Kate Shannon on the 3,200-meter relay and will run the open 1,600. In an email he noted Pendergast was to run some "off events" in a home meet on Tuesday. For elite runners such events are basically training opportunities.

In her last big meet, the DuPage Valley Conference indoor championships on March 17, Pendergast set a state record with her time of 10 minutes, 11.56 seconds in the 3,200-meter run. In May 2015 she won that event at the girls Class 3A outdoor state meet.

The DVC indoor came six days after Pendergast set a state 1,600 record of 4:49.3 at the indoor Batavia Distance Madness Invitational.

Gatorade's 2015 girls cross country runner of the year for Illinois, Pendergast also owns the all-class cross country record at 15:53.8 set last fall in the Class 3A championship in Peoria.

She proceeded to finish eighth at the Nike Cross Nationals followed by a fourth-place finish, including a brief lead, at the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships - then placed 11th among her age group in an international run in Scotland.

Having set five individual Naperville North track and field records, should Pendergast stick to the 1,600 on Friday she'll pursue the meet record of 4:54.24 set by Benet's McKinzie Schulz in 2009.

Last year at the Gus Scott, Pendergast finished second in the 1,600 to Jacobs' Lauren VanVlierbergen. Pendergast's time of 4:56.53 set the Huskies' outdoor record.

Speaking of records ...

Metea Valley boys track coach Aaron Lewis said temperatures were a little crisp last Saturday at Belleville West's Norm Armstrong Invitational, but unlike most programs in DuPage County at least the Mustangs got a meet in.

The journey paid off when junior Alonzo Taylor-Jones and senior Jordan Cagigal each set outdoor program records.

Taylor-Jones finished fourth in the 100-meter dash - behind Cahokia superstar Ja'mari Ward's winning 10.64 - with a time of 11 seconds flat. The junior beat his own record of 11.03 set in the preliminaries at the 2014 Bartlett sectional.

Cagigal finished first in the 400 at 49.79. The senior won that event at the DuPage Valley Conference indoor meet, running 49.77 to set a conference record. Cagigal's time at Belleville West topped Metea's prior mark set by Will King, 50.34 in 2012.

Cagigal also set the Mustangs' 200-meter record of 22.43 with a sixth-place finish, a race again paced by Ward at 21.05. Taylor-Jones ran a 22.94 to rank third all-time at Metea, right behind the prior mark of 22.62 set by Jarrell Ross in 2012.

"It means the world for not only us but more for him," Lewis said of Cagigal's efforts. "He's been pushing himself to get up to this elite level."

Lewis said Metea's Class of 2012, the school's first graduating class, provided the track and field benchmark that this year's group is striving to exceed.

"They were all great athletes and really set the standards," Lewis said. "We challenged our kids to meet those standards and actually better them to push those times further and further down."

Further West

Hinsdale Central junior Blake Evertsen also set a program record, in the 3,200-meter run at the Arcadia Invitational in California.

Evertsen ran a time of 9:06.36 to top Jon Thanos' 1983 mark by the narrowest of margins. To illustrate how fast the Arcadia field was in distance events, Evertsen finished 23rd of 30 athletes in his heat running a time that would have placed second at last year's Illinois Class 3A meet.

Neuqua Valley enjoyed a bounty from what Wildcats coach Mike Kennedy said was the largest group ever sent to Arcadia by an Illinois school - 13 individuals.

Recording numerous times that rank among the best in Illinois this young outdoor season, highlights included Cornell-bound senior Connor Horn's personal-best 9:09.72 in his heat of the 3,200, and also Horn's time of 4:14.992 in the four-by-1,600-meter relay. That second mark is less than a second off Chris Derrick's program-record 4:14.36. In his own heat of the 3,200, Scott Anderson ran a personal-best 9:15.24.

Also, junior Isaiah Robinson's dual 800-meter times. The first, a split time as the anchor of Neuqua's 1,600 sprint medley, was 1:54.8, the third-fastest time in school history. Robinson returned the next day to run 1:58.50 in the open 800.

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