Barrington junior Sirois is back to running record-setting times

Barrington High School junior Mia Sirois figuratively climbed the mountain in cross country and track and field.

Then she fell down a mountain, literally.

Now, she’s scaling new peaks.

On March 12 Sirois won her 5,000-meter race at the New Balance Nationals Indoor in Boston. Her time of 15 minutes, 58.06 seconds ranks third among high school girls in 2026 and is ninth all-time, according to Track & Field News.

“I’m really excited,” Sirois said a couple days later while awaiting a flight home from a college visit. She will choose her Division I destination later this spring.

This is outstanding news for Illinois prep track and cross country and obviously for Sirois, who while hill training in Colorado last July stepped wrong on a boulder and broke her left fibula.

She started running again in August, then discovered she’d also broken her heel in the rocky downhill crash. That forced her to miss all but one meet in the 2025 cross country season.

Sirois won Class 3A cross country in 2024 with the fastest girls time in history at Detweiller Park. She won the 3A track 3,200-meter run in 2024, and again in 2025 in school-record time.

After tuneups at Batavia and Rockford Auburn to start the 2026 indoor track season, Sirois tore it up in Boston.

“I was real happy with my race,” she said. “I knew I was capable of sub-16 and to win like that is honestly just really, really relieving when it all comes together and it all clicks.”

Sirois didn’t mean her left leg. Because last Saturday at North Central College she ran an indoor personal-best 1,600 time of 4:53.99.

“I'm just excited to see what I can do this outdoor season,” Sirois said. “I've set big goals for myself, so I’ve just got to get back out there and continue to train hard and just stack some good, consistent mileage and workouts. Yeah, just keep having fun out there.”

Go Jaxson

Warren junior guard Jaxson Davis repeated as Gatorade Illinois boys basketball player of the year.

The unprecedented three-time captain of the Daily Herald Lake County All-Area Team averaged 23.8 points, 5.3 rebounds, 5.3 assists and 3.5 steals for a 30-4 sectional semifinalist. He’s also got a 3.52 grade-point average, Gatorade noted.

With a season left, Davis joins Jalen Brunson, Adam Miller, Jabari Parker and Jon Scheyer as Illinois’ two-time Gatorade honorees.

In the 41 years Gatorade has presented this award, no Illinois boy has earned three. Naperville Central’s Candace Parker and Rock Island’s Brea Beal both were three-time Gatorade Illinois girls players of the year.

‘Preparation meets opportunity’

At 2 p.m. Friday the puck drops on the Aurora University men’s hockey team’s first NCAA Division III Frozen Four appearance.

The No. 4-ranked Spartans (25-5-1) play No. 6 Hamilton College (21-5-2) at the Utica Memorial Auditorium in New York.

The winner between three-time defending champion No. 1 Hobart (29-0) and No. 7 Wisconsin-Stout (23-5-1) awaits in Sunday’s Division III championship.

“It took an insane amount of work, but it’s euphoric for this group,” said Aurora’s 10-year head coach Jason Bloomingburg, once a Hobey Baker Award finalist at Wayne State.

“For how hard it was to get here we’re so excited to live every minute and we’re just going to enjoy it.”

Bloomingburg, who led the Spartans to the Division III quarterfinals last season, said this is the first Aurora University team to reach a final four since Spartans baseball finished in third place in 2004.

He credited everyone including assistant coach Brian Dempsey and graduate assistant Joe Costello, athletic director Jim Hamad and school administration, to his family and “an unbelievable senior class that helped reshape this program to get it where it’s at today.”

In a matter of “preparation meets opportunity,” Bloomingburg said, the Spartans reached the Division III semifinals with a 3-2 win over No. 3 Endicott College on Andrew Schultz’s goal at 3:12 of the second overtime period.

Goaltender Matt O’Donnell made 56 saves as Aurora set a program record for victories, one more than last season’s 24 wins.

The Spartans went 1-15-1 when men’s hockey debuted in 2014-15, and finished 4-19-2 in Bloomingburg’s first season, 2016-17.

Given this spectacular season, the Frozen Four is a bit like “playing with house money,” the coach said.

“At the end of it, I just think it’s one of those that people are going to talk about for the next 30, 40 years,” Bloomingburg said. “Whether you’re in our room or you’re around campus it’s going to be remembered, and I’m very proud to be a part of that.”

doberhelman@dailyherald.com