Yong guides WW South to another invite crown
To understand why host Wheaton Warrenville South won the Tiger Invitational for the second year in a row Friday night, look no further than senior captain Amy Yong.
“Amy is not the most vocal leader,” Tigers girls track coach Rob Harvey said. “She’s more of a lead-by-example kid. She runs a lot of those relays. She always leads off or runs in the middle, never anchors, and the anchor always seems to get the glory. Which is good. But she likes being that person. And your team is only as good as those kids, those quiet competitors that lead by example. And that’s her, that really is her.”
WW South was very good, as usual. The Tigers scored 141 points, easily outdistancing second-place Bolingbrook’s 69 points at the 18-team meet in Wheaton. St. Ignatius was third with 61 points, followed by York (59.5), Glenbard West (56.5), Naperville North (49), Hinsdale Central (49) and Schaumburg (44).
“All of our hard work during the indoor season, even during the off-season, is starting to pay off,” Yong said. “It’s been a really good season so far.”
To Harvey, Yong is simply a jack-of-all-trades.
“And she’s a master of all,” Harvey added. “Anything that kid does she can do successfully.”
Yong helped the Tigers start the meet right by joining teammates Erin Herrmann, Hope Schmelzle and McKenna Kiple on the winning 3,200-meter relay. She also ran on the winning 1,600-meter relay team and added more points to the Tigers’ total with a fifth-place finish in the 400 run as WW South overwhelmed the field with its depth.
“It was a great way to start off with our 4x8,” Yong said. “The whole team, all the relays and individual events, everyone was placing. It was a really fun night for our team.”
Madeline Perez won the 3,200 run for Glenbard West in 11:05.80, and Emma Reifel won the 800 in 2:19.50 despite nursing a cold.
“She needed it,” Hilltoppers coach Kelly Hass said of Reifel. “It was nice for her to get an individual win. And Madeline Perez was huge. That poor kid is second always. She had to run by herself, but she did it. It was a cold night, and we’re pretty happy with her.”
Schaumburg again was led by sophomore Darneisha Spann, who won both the 100 hurdles and 300 hurdles and took third in the 200.
“I’ve never had that much competition before,” Spann said of the 300 hurdles. “I actually liked it because I like to see how fast of a time I can get. And as for the 100 hurdles, same competition and I just pushed through it and I wanted the first-place finish so bad that I tried all I can do.”
Doing so well against strong competition thrilled Spann.
“It obviously tells me I’ve been doing something great because lately I’ve been working on my form, so I know that it’s actually working,” Spann said.
Wheaton North took ninth with 43 points, Naperville Central had 41, and a pair of second-place finishes helped Glenbard South, a Class 2A school in a meet loaded with bigger Class 3A schools, to 38 points.
“We seemed to be ahead of schedule about two weeks ago, and then we’ve taken a couple of steps back overall,” Raiders coach Mark Tacchi said after Samantha Howard was second in the discuss behind WW South’s Desirae Ranberg and Katelyn Hill was second in the 400 behind Naperville North speedster Alexis Hyshaw. “We’ve had a couple of injury bugs. I think our lack of depth is hurting us, and if a kid goes down it’s hard for someone else to step in. But this is where we get better, running the big schools, so we’re all excited about this.”