Bittersweet day for Bartlett
Saturday was about as bittersweet a day as the Bartlett boys track team has had in its short history.
The Hawks had never won the Flying Hawk invite and had only finished second, albeit a distant one, a couple of times. So when they entered the final event, the 1,600-meter relay, leading the meet and only having to beat Deerfield, excitement among coaches and athletes was high. Unfortunately, the excitement was a little too high.
Into the final 100 meters, the anchor legs from Bartlett and Deerfield were stride-for-stride. Along the stretch was also a barrier with flags preventing athletes not in the race from coming too close to the runners. Just as the runners crossed the finish line, several Bartlett athletes got a little too close to the runners, some jumped over the barrier line, and the Hawks were disqualified.
The result was Deerfield winning the Flying Hawk Invite with 84 points to 77 for Bartlett.
“Overall, this is the best team we have had here,” said Bartlett coach Eric Kramer. “It came down to a couple of DQ’s, but we had personal bests all over the place and we were scoring in almost every event.”
Despite the DQ at the end, the team of Brandon Smith, Vince Zipparro, Connor Rachford and Mitch Sullivan clocked a 3:26, which was a five-second improvement over their previous best set earlier in the week.
“It’s hard but we had a lot of positive things happen today,” Kramer added. “This can turn out to be a good thing for us — keeping the kids hungry, and still wanting more.”
Some of the top efforts for the Hawks on Saturday included a school-record performance from Tony Tran, Aaron Everson, Zach Karys and Nick Simich in the 400 relay. The team clocked an area-best 43.09 to hold off South Elgin and their group of Thomas Asa, Jeff Broger, Zach Gross and Adolfo Pacheco (43.29).
Kevin Bauers set a personal best with a second-place finish in the discus (161-3) and Alex Bailey added a second-place finish in the 300 hurdles and a third in the 110 hurdles for the Hawks. The Hawks also added a 1-2 finish in the 100 from Everson and Simich respectively.
Despite running a depleted lineup because of ACT testing, Prospect still managed a strong third-place finish with 70.5 points. Seniors Mike Thill and Josh Campos put together dominating performances in winning the 1,600 and 800 respectively.
Thill took the lead from the start in the 1,600 and was never threatened in a season-best 4:25.22.
“I knew today was a great day outside so I wanted to get a great time,” Thill said. “We always talk about place taking care of itself and going after a great time and I was able to do that today.”
Campos battled Loyola senior Todd Ford through most of his 800 race, but his strong kick and foot speed in the final 100 helped Campos win in a season- and area-best 1:56.65.
“You treasure conditions like we had to run in because before the year we thought that the weather here would be snow and rain like last year,” Campos said.
Just behind Campos was Hersey junior Robert Somary. Somary clocked his best 800 of the season in 1:59.09. He completed the tough distance double with a solid 4:34.17 in the 1,600 for a third-place finish. The Huskies had one of the only multi-event winners on Saturday as senior Mark Balmes swept the throwing events. Balmes took control of the discus on this first throw in the finals with a season-best toss of 161-9. He followed that up with a modest 55-8¾ to win the shot, just ahead of Lakes senior Ty Summers (51-3¾).
“I worked on trying to finish stronger at the end of my throws in the discus,” Balmes said. “I just have to keep working hard every week — not overthrow or underthrow, but keep working.”
In their fourth place-team finish with 58 points, Schaumburg earned a pair of event wins. Juwaan Richard edged Adam Rabushka of Deerfield to win the 400 in 51.30 and Andy Selep continued to go higher in the pole vault and cleared 14-3 to capture the event.
“A lot of good things happened for us here today,” Schaumburg coach Ryan Senica said. “But we also know we have room to get better and we will.”
Other top performances on the afternoon came from Elk Grove freshman Paul Ifianayi, who won the frosh/soph level 400. His time of 50.58 was the fastest at the meet on either level.
Lakes junior Troy Swindel captured the high jump with a personal best jump of 6-1.