Libertyville takes Giant step to title
There was very little wiggle room for host Libertyville when the Wildcats hosted an IHSA Class 3A boys cross country regional Saturday afternoon at Adler Memorial Park.
With Highland Park right on their heels the entire three miles, the Wildcats kept their poise and narrowly captured the championship of the nine-team meet — 52-55 over the runner-up Giants.
Under new IHSA rules this season, the top seven teams advance to the Schaumburg sectional Saturday — meaning that Warren (77 points) in third, Deerfield (81) in fourth, Lake Forest (115) in fifth, Stevenson (131) in sixth and seventh-place Zion-Benton (191) are all headed for Busse Woods.
Eighth-place Mundelein (194) barely missed the sectional meet cut-off, but the Mustangs will be represented by three at-large individual runners.
Libertyvile’s first regional crown since 1998 was led by an elite trio of runners, including fourth-place finisher Dan Ryan, Nick Korhumel (fifth) and Easton Huch (seventh). Cam Taylor added a 10th-place finish and Evan Bujak was 26th.
“We’ll rest for sectionals so hopefully we’ll see some even faster times next week,” said Wildcats coach Mark Buesing. “Easton Huch, our No. 3 runner, had a really nice race, and Evan Bujak won the regional title for us as our No. 5 runner.”
Warren junior Martin Martinez rolled to the individual title with a winning time of 15:39.39 on the hilly course to easily topple runner-up Jonah Hanig (15:45) of Highland Park.
“Right before the two-mile mark I made my move because I knew some of the other guys would start to get tired,” Martinez said. “I’m definitely hoping to make state, and I’m just going to try to keep in contact with that front group (at sectionals).”
Warren put together a very solid group effort behind Jacob Butler (16th), Tyler Herman (18th), Mike Harland (20th) and Reese Brady (22nd).
“Martin ran extremely smart so I’m really happy with how he ran,” said Warren coach Bill Dawson. “Everybody else needs to work at being more aggressive at the beginning because we fall too far back and then we have to catch up.”
Thomas Russell was Stevenson’s top runner in 12th place with support from Samuel Oh in 19th and Jonathon Kersky in 27th.
“Our guys from last week kind of shifted their order quite a bit, but overall everybody was pretty solid,” said Stevenson coach Scott Somers. “We were hoping to qualify and we did that and we’ll see what we can do next week.”
Mundelein’s trio of Liam Mellon (29th), Adam Fell (32nd) and Nitesh Kumar (41st) are at-large sectional qualifiers.
“We didn’t finish the race strong and we were in great position at the 1½-mile mark,” said Mundelein coach John Osmanski. “We had such a tight pack and they just struggled in the last three-quarters of a mile.”