Warren hits its stride in Harland
The Warren boys cross country team lost four of its top seniors to graduation last fall, but the Blue Devils showed that they are still a team to contend with Saturday morning at the Pat Harland Invitational.
Warren had five runners place in the top 18 on the 3-mile Fox River Park course hosted by Antioch, and the Blue Devils wound up capturing first place in the 16-team meet with 64 points.
New Trier was a distant second with 110 points while Richmond-Burton was able to nip Crystal Lake South 116-117 for third place on the hilly course. Barrington was impressive with a fifth-place score of 121 despite only using a part of its varsity lineup while Jacobs outdistanced Lakes 138-171 for sixth place.
The battle for first place was a great one with Richmond-Burton senior Ian Sanchez (16:15) managing to pull away from Barrington sophomore Eric Peterson (16:19) down the final stretch to capture the individual crown.
Warren's winning effort was led by senior Danny Kleine's fourth-place finish with great support from freshman teammate Martin Martinez in 12th, Xavier Suarez in 14th, Kevin Vollrath in 16th, and Matt Message in 18th. Dan Neal placed 30th for the Blue Devils Saturday.
"I felt pretty tired mentally going into it, and I'll have better races than I had today," Kleine said. "It was definitely a very good team performance even missing one of our top five runners in Matt Frank today."
The Blue Devils have been going through some growing pains in the early stages of the season after losing a great leader in 2008 state qualifier Karsen Green to graduation.
"We ran really well and I'm very pleased with their performance today," said Warren coach Bill Dawson. "He (Kleine) has been running consistently well for us all year and he just keeps getting better every week. This is a good test for us because we don't have any hills to train on and the top five ran really well as a pack."
Crystal Lake South also had a strong team effort as the Gators were led by sophomore Brian Roesslein in eighth, Andrew Hubbard in 25th, Dave Lundine in 26th, and Alex Ortega in 27th.
"We didn't run very well, but we were missing our No. 2 and 5 runners today," said CLS coach Rich Eschmann. "It's homecoming so we didn't have our focus today, but (Roesslein) is running all right for a sophomore."
Besides the strong effort from Peterson in second, Ryan Grave placed 17th for Barrington on the hilly course.
"He (Peterson) ran the dual meet on Thursday against Palatine and Schaumburg and he was our No. 1 runner there too," said Barrington coach Ty Gorman. "We held out our entire top five from earlier in the season, but I'm pleased with the way they ran today."
William Hennessy was Jacobs' top runner in 10th place while teammates Matt Kendzior (13th), and Tyler Vincent (19th) led Grayslake North's surge. Nick Ellingson added a 20th-place finish for the Golden Eagles to edge Lakes' top runner Kyle White in 21st. Danny McGrath placed 23rd for the Eagles followed by teammates Josh Camp in 28th and Blake Franson in 49th. Josh Kranz placed 29th for Jacobs.
"We're struggling right now, we can't seem to run consistently, and we got out too slow today," said Lakes coach Andrew Schroeder. "It just wasn't our day today, but Kyle White ran a good race and he stepped it up as our No. 1 runner."
Grayslake North's team outdistanced Grant 253-284 for 10th place, but junior Ryan Mamerow had a strong seventh-place run for the Bulldogs.
"He (Mamerow) ran well and his hamstring was still bothering him from last week," said Grant coach Jeff Durlak. "But even without training this week he still beat his time here from two weeks ago and we want to make sure he is healthy for the rest of the season."