Cross country: Batavia sweeps Upstate Eight titles
Batavia's boys and girls cross country teams made it a clean sweep Monday at the Upstate Eight Conference meet at Kress Creek Farms in West Chicago.
Mia Gianfrancesco led the way for the girls, winning the conference title in 18:11. She led by 10 seconds after a mile and won by 17 seconds over St. Charles North's Natalie Galvan.
"Pretty much took it right from the start," Batavia coach Chad Hillman said. "She usually runs a little conservatively at the beginning and does a good job coming on and today she pretty well took it right from the start and led wire-to-wire."
Gianfrancesco was one of six All-Conference runners for Batavia. The others were MaryGrace Golden (5th), Jenna Schifferer (6th), Erin O'Brien (11th), Erika Mansfield (15th) and Alexa Andrews (16th).
"Definitely still need to keep working on the gap," Hillman said. "When it comes to a conference meet you are really just worried about your places to the competition so we did what we needed to do there. But we definitely need to work on the gap from one to two. Everyone has tightened up fairly well on the back. Our three through six have been pretty tight."
For the River Division only, Batavia (31) finished ahead of Geneva (59), St. Charles East (59), St. Charles North (77), Elgin (135) and Larkin (169).
Glenbard East took the Upstate Eight Valley title with 23 points among the Valley schools.
Scored without divisions, Batavia was first with 33, Geneva had 74, St. Charles East 90 and Glenbard East 92.
Ally Suyak followed Galvan for the North Stars in 11th.
Runner-up Geneva placed five in the top 20: Sophia McDonnell (4th), Taryn Christy (8th), Grace Brolly (12th), Adrine Larsen (15th) and Lauren Hasty (20th).
"Batavia is very strong and had a lot of top girls," Geneva coach Bob Thomson said. "This is only the second time all season we've really run with our top girls intact. It's nice to see they were competitive within the conference.
"We have to see how everybody runs the next couple weeks.We haven't been consistent and we need to show some consistency if we are going to have a good postseason here."
Alice Abbott paced the Saints in third. Moreno Kasey was the top Elgin runner taking seventh.
Glenbard East's Katie Schaefner had the lowest time among Valley runners. Bartlett (81) took second in the Valley led by Leah Kern (2nd) and Camille Buchanan (6th), and South Elgin (83) was third paced by fifth-place Valley finisher Anderson Hannah.
Boys race: Batavia dominated the UEC River behind Damian Rodriguez (4th), Adam Kennedy (5th), Shane Knanishu (6th), Chris Levario (7th), Sean Adams (10th) and Eamon Samsami (11th).
Fourth in the standings, Geneva produced the race-winner Josh Rodgers and runner-up Ryan Kredell.
Rodgers won in 15:41 and Kredell wasn't far back in 15:47. Both are juniors, with Kredell recently rounding into form after a bout with mono.
"It's awesome," Geneva coach Bob Thomson said. "We were just waiting for Ryan to not be sick, to get over his sickness. It's a big gap from the two of them to our other guys."
St. Charles East took second behind Aidan King and Robert Liking, third and eighth, respectively. St. Charles North was third led by ninth-place finisher Bojan Ruttens.