Strong effort from Libertyville

All one needed to know about Libertyville’s discus and shot put throwers Saturday at St. Charles East’s Elmore McCornack Invitational was summed up by Matt Dziedzic as he crossed the finish line to win the weightman’s relay.

The strapping junior crossed the line with upraised arms flexed in a muscleman pose symbolic of his group’s winning performances on the track and in the field.

In this relays meet, Libertyville won the combined discus event as well as shot put and, as Dziedzik joyfully demonstrated, the weightman’s relay.

“I think it’s great when we’re all running and all working as a team, to win the trifecta, as we’re saying,” said Dziedzik, whose top shot put distance of 51 feet, 1 inch bested all 28 throwers in the event. He duplicated his winning effort in discus, at 135-10.

“We had a combined score of 491 (feet) for the discus, which was in part by everyone, because we all did very well,” said Dziedzik, sporting a fresh mohawk cut to keep with the tradition signifying the Wildcats’ top thrower. “And then the shot put, I think it was 177, that was in part by everyone. I’d like to tee up Mark Szkodyn, he was really good as well as Louis Diamond. I was very impressed with how we competed today.”

Diamond and Szkodyn each went 44 feet in shot. Anthony Valente threw the discus 127 feet with Matt Williams going 122.

“I believe that we’re not really recognized as much,” Dziedzik said, “so now getting all those points for all three events will probably help us place very high today.”

That would have been the case had team scores been kept, but the McCornack is a nonscoring meet. Nonetheless, first-year Libertyville coach Jason Schroeder knew the proverbial score.

“This is actually my first year at this St. Charles meet, it’s my first year at Libertyville but we have coaches that have been here quite a while,” Schroeder said. “And they say they think this is the first time that we’ve come out and placed at each and every event. So that means something about this group.”

The Wildcats won the opening event on the track, the four-by-1,600 relay with Shane Reilly, Nick Korhumel, Easton Huch and Dan Ryan aboard. Later, the first three runners were joined by Cameron Taylor to claim the 3,200-meter relay in a time of 8 minutes, 21.68 seconds.

At a meet Monday, Schroeder said he was not impressed with how the team “came off the bus and prepared.” Saturday this was not a problem.

“We want to come off the bus, prepare to win, work your relay exchanges, all that type of stuff,” the coach said. “I thought we did a much better job as far as that’s concerned. The guys were focused on their race, so that was good. It was good to see them come out and compete.”