Lake Park stays ahead of the game at LZ
The wind, the cold and even the position of being the hunted couldn’t slow down two-time defending Class 3A boys track state champion Lake Park on Friday night at the Fifth Annual Lake Zurich Bears Invite.
Known for having outstanding depth and tremendous strengths in the field events, the Lancers used that strength to amass 186 points in capturing the invitational title. The host Bears ran second (158) followed by Barrington (154), Lakes (127), and Fremd (118.5).
“Number one, we wanted to come out of this meet healthy,” said Lake Park coach Jay Ivory. “You tell them it’s not so much about the time or the distance, but it’s about getting out there and competing and doing your best. To see the kids go out and do that was just great.”
Due to the frigid temperatures, Lake Park, like many of the other competing teams chose to rest some athletes. For the Lancers, that meant sitting down standouts Scott Fillip and Kevin Spejcher. It also gave the Lancers a chance to have others step up, such as junior Mike Amerlan. He captured the triple jump (41 feet, 4½ inches) and leaped to a second-place finish in the long jump (19-5).
Senior Scott Karlis continued the strong tradition of throwers by taking the discus event (141-9½) and in the pole vault, an event where the Lancers have ruled so often, they did again Friday. Juniors Tim Ehrhardt and Derrick Smith finished 1-2 in the event. Smith also took the high jump with a modest 6-0 winning height.
On the track there were few more dominant performances than that of Lake Zurich senior Mike Rantis. Competing in a tough 400-200 double, Rantis ran as if there was no wind at all. Rantis ran away from the field in the 400, winning in a season best 50.8.
His 200-meter dash effort was just as impressive. Rantis burst out of the blocks and never looked back, taking the 200 in a personal best 22.6.
“The 400 was rough,” Rantis said. “The wind kind of held the whole group up, but I fought through it and the wind kind of carried me to the end.”
The Bears also had event wins in the 3,200 relay and in the 800-meter run. The team of Will Llanos, John Ramirez, Greg Geimer and Pat Juras won in 8:36.2. Juras came back later to capture the 800 run in 2:00.0 just ahead of Bobby Svoboda of Benet (2:00.3).
Despite racing half of its team at Lake Zurich and the other half at the Travis Invite at Hersey, Fremd was still able to run to a fifth-place finish and it was the strength of the Vikings sprints that helped the cause.
The 800-meter relay has become a specialty of sorts for Fremd and the group of Christian Vail, Andy Fiszer, Jake Lewis and AJ McGhee ran away from a very good field to win in 1:33.2.
“We missed out in the 400 relay because of a bad hand-off and we really wanted to get this race,” Vail said. “It’s a fun race for us and we just want to keep getting better for conference, sectionals and eventually state.”
Fiszer started the evening session for Fremd by racing to an impressive 10.87 win in the 100 meter dash. The Vikings also captured the 1,600 run when Harry Winter passed an unsuspecting KJ Matuszak in the final 50 meters to win in 4:33.0.
Event wins for Carmel included a 15.4 win in the 110 high hurdles from Brian Kadowaki and a stellar performance in the 400 relay. The team of Anthony Paul, David Biondo, Devin Becker and Jack Schoen ran a season-best 43.9 to hold off a hard charge from Lake Zurich and Fremd.
Barrington senior Erik Peterson did his best to battle through the windy conditions in the 3,200 run. The Butler-bound standout raced ahead of the field with teammate Ryan Burgoon and was never challenged. Only problem for Peterson was, no one got out front to cut through the wind.
“That was the tough part,” Peterson said. “Leading all the way out front, no one could block the wind.”
Peterson won in 9:36.8 while Burgoon placed second (9:53.4).
It’s hard to imagine how the night could have started or finished any better than it did for Lakes. Junior Shaun Beutlich started things with a win in the long jump (19-5.5) then the success carried over to the throwing events. Ty Summers, after his solid performance at Bartlett last week, captured the shot put with a best effort of 50-10.
To finish the night, the Eagles got a very impressive anchor leg from Ryan Prais to help the 1,600-relay edge Carmel in 3:32.2. Trevor Ray, Jake Degrave and Ahman Reffat, teamed with Prais for the relay event win.
Other event winners included Andrew Jensen of Wheeling, who broke off a personal-best 40.9 to win the 300 hurdles.