Dundee-Crown's Manfrin regional champ
Saturday's St. Charles North Class 3A regional boys cross country meet was used as much for preparation for next week's sectional as anything else.
Dundee-Crown junior Anthony Manfrin began his trek back to the state meet by winning at Leroy Oakes Forest Preserve. St. Charles East hosts the sectional on the same course next Saturday.
"It helps out a lot being here for regional and sectionals. Our team gets an idea how to run the course," Manfrin said. "Today was just to come out as a team and see where we were at and run with St. Charles North and St. Charles East."
Manfrin advanced to the state meet last season, but was disqualified. This season didn't start well for Manfrin either, missing a few meets because of an injury. He's rounding into form at the right time. Manfrin won the 3-mile race in 15:54.5, almost 30 seconds better than second-place finisher, St. Charles North's Kyle Zankowski.
"I wanted to get a good run in today," Manfrin said. "I really wanted to run the course in preparation for next week. Run through it and work the last half mile because that's were I know where I'll be hurting."
Zankowski finished in 16:23.3. Teammate Ryan Senci was third in 13:23.7 as the North Stars won the team championship with 22 points.
"We were just trying to qualify for next week. If the regional title came with it, that's cool," Zankowski said. "We trained through this race."
North had five of the top seven finishers. Peter Johnson (4th, 16:37.3), Will Novorolsky (6th, 16:43.9) and Brad Wheeler (7th, 16:51.6) scored for the North Stars, who also had the 11th-place finisher, Billy Clink, and 13th-place finisher, Kyle Kuczynski.
Also advancing as teams were Dundee-Crown, St. Charles East, Jacobs and Elgin.
The Chargers finished with 58 points. Nathan Prom (5th, 16:38.9), Jon Keable (10th, 16:57.1), Mike Wiechmann (20th, 17:28.7) and Ryan Smith (22nd, 17:35.3) scored along with Manfrin for D-C.
STC East had five runners finish in the top 18 and had 74 points, lead by Mike Faith's 8th-place finish in 16:52.3.
Jacobs' William Hennessy was 9th in 15:56.1 to help the Golden Eagles advance with 103 points.
Elgin earned the final team spot with 134 points. Senior Ricardo Mancha led the way with a 12th-place finish in 17:08.9.
"Ive been sick the last two days," Mancha said. "I don't know if it's the flu or just the cold, but it hurts. Everything hurts actually. Better this week than next."
Five individual runners also moved on to the sectional. They were Streamwood's Roger Klein (14th, 17:13.9) Joel Pinto (29th, 18:00.7) and Tyler Blum (36th, 18:25.4); South Elgin's Francisco Gonzalez (30th, 18:01.8) and Larkin's Dan Runzel (36th, 18:21.8).