Cross country: Cary-Grove 2nd in both FVC races
Cary-Grove took second place in both the boys and girls varsity races at Saturday's Fox Valley Conference cross country meet, run at Veterans Acres Park in Crystal Lake.
In both contests, the Trojans trailed Crystal Lake Central, which won the boys race with 70 points and the girls with 38.
Crystal Lake South runner Jack Becker led the boys race starting at the 2-mile mark followed by Cary-Grove's Alex Ratkovich. Both harriers fell during the last half mile. Becker, even with the help of Cole Barkocy from Crystal Lake Central, could not finish. Ratkovich recovered but lost ground to other runners.
"Our guy (Ratkovich) and the number one guy from South (Becker), they fell apart. The South guy didn't finish and Ratkovich fell down. He was second and stumbled back into finishing 14th," said Cary-Grove coach Layne Holter. "He's had a great year this year but had a rough day today. The other guys ran like we wanted them to. They ran hard and had good races."
"It was exhaustion. He ran a little bit too hard," said Crystal Lake South coach Rich Eschman about Becker, who left the course in an ambulance. "It was disappointing for him and hopefully he recovers."
Hampshire senior Jacob Oury won the race with a time of 16:21.6. His first place finish led the Whip-Purs to fourth place (110).
"I started conservatively. I didn't want to start up too fast because I knew the hills were going to be insanely hard," Oury said. "I just conserved and moved from one person to the next. Then I hauled going down that last hill."
Jacobs' Zach Albrecht claimed second place (16:32.9) just ahead of Filip Pajak from Prairie Ridge (16:34.4).
Cary-Grove and Dundee-Crown both notched 105 points. The Trojans won the tie breaker - their sixth place runner finished ahead of the Chargers' sixth place finisher. Anthony Hurgoi paced D-C with a ninth-place finish (16:55.4)
Huntley took fifth (112) led by sophomore Jeremy Roe (12th, 17:05.9)
Girls: Cary-Grove, led by freshman Allison Drage's seventh-place finish (20:00.1), edged Huntley out for second by 2 points, earning 97 to the Red Raiders' 99.
"We wanted to have a good team race. Central and Huntley were head and shoulders above us all season so the fact that we came out and ran such a competitive race was great," said Cary-Grove coach Mark Anderson. "We were hoping to finish third. Second was tremendous. If you look at the point spread we could easily have been fourth and we would have been thrilled with that."
"I knew Central had a phenomenal team and they were going to run away with it," said Brad Gallaugher, the Huntley coach. "I give a lot of credit to the Cary girls and what they did today. We thought we could seal the deal with second place and they came ready to race today."
Mary Raclawski (12th, 20:30.7) and Victoria Watkins (13th, 20:32.6) paced Huntley.
Caitlin Bruzzini of Crystal Lake South repeated as the winner of the girls race with a time of 19:09.1 and helped the Gators take fourth place (101).
Bruzzini trailed Hampshire's Marie Mayer for the first two miles.
"This is our home course so I felt really comfortable with where to pick it up," said Bruzzini. "I wasn't sure what was going on behind me or if they were going to speed up, so I was trying to create a gap there and was also trying to close the gap down on the Hampshire girl."
Mayer finished third with a time of 19:36.7.