St. Charles E. wins regional
A new race, a new individual winner for the St. Charles East girls cross country team. Everything else was same old dominating Saints.
A week after freshman Torree Scull won the Upstate Eight Conference River title, senior Mallory Abel came out victorious on the same LeRoy Oakes course Saturday at the Class 3A St. Charles East regional.
Abel won in 17 minutes, 33.9 seconds, almost 11 seconds ahead of the runner-up from St. Charles North, Sydney Stuenkel. Scull was third in 18:02.
Nobody could challenge the Saints, who won the regional with 23 points, well ahead of St. Charles North’s 55 and Geneva in third at 103.
“Just another trial run for next week and ultimately downstate,” Saints coach Denise Hefferin said. “Keep improving every week. Today’s meet was another week of preparation for the state meet.”
Both Hefferin and Abel said it doesn’t matter who crosses the line first as long as they are wearing black and orange.
“The top four are highly competitive and we like it,” Hefferin said. “We talk about whoever comes across the line first every one is a team champion today and that’s what we look for.”
“We are teammates,” Abel said. “We both want to win but the end of the day we are teammates and whoever wins we are happy for each other.
“Last week I lost my focus a little. This week I went out and thought it was my last race here ever, I just want to win it.”
The Saints’ 3-4-5 runners all placed in the Top 10: Sarah Hill in fifth, Jessica Evans sixth and Kristin Sheehan eighth.
“We worked on some things today and we have some things walking out of here we want to continue to work on,” Hefferin said. “We’re not state ready yet. We will be in two weeks.”
The Saints will see Wheaton Warrenville South, the state’s No. 2 team, and No. 4 Naperville North, among others, next week at the Wheaton North sectional on the same course the Saints competed earlier this fall at a flight meet.
“We are pretty confident,” Abel said. “We have a really good team this year. You can never say 100 percent sure but we are feeling pretty confident. Next week on a personal standpoint I’m feeling pretty good. This race definitely helped.”
Stuenkel led a solid second-place finish for the North Stars. Sophomore Ashley England made one of the best dashes to the finish, nipping the Saints’ Hill for fourth place in 18:07.5 to Hill’s 18:08.0.
All seven of the North Stars finished in the top 23: Kelly Manski 11th, Natalia Gawlik 18th, Megan Young 20th, Ania Gawlik 21st and Kaylee Wessel 23rd.
Geneva coach Bob Thomson said senior Kristi Shogren had her best race of the year to take 14th in 19:05.8. Only freshman teammate Brook Nusser in 10th finished ahead of her for the Vikings.
“Kristi has been up and down,” Thomson said. “She got her PR today, our only senior in the top seven. She stepped up.”
So did Bartlett junior Nicole Watkins who took seventh in 18:30.1 for the Hawks, who were fifth as a team.
“We were really happy with the way Nichole ran today,” Bartlett coach Beth Emody said. “She ran really strong. She went in with a new strategy and made sure she stayed competitive throughout the race. It was an overall make sure she is continuing to push the pace and make sure you don’t get into your comfort zone.”
Taylor Crawford wasn’t too far behind Watkins taking 13th.
“The biggest thing was getting to next week,” Emody said. “This time of year you want to get as much racing as possible. The other thing was try to race this week like it is next week. How hard are you going to run next week to get as close as qualifying for state as possible? That is something we talk about all season.”