State Final Recap

I have attempted to start writing this recap multiple times and started it over. There is so much I want to say about the group of young men who competed this past weekend in Peoria.  When I took over in 2013 you could tell the team wanted to be great, they were driven, but hadn’t realized any of those goals as of yet.  Leading that charge was John Chomiak.  No athlete I have ever worked with wanted to push himself to be the best more than John has the past three years.  His first race as a freshman he ran 24 minutes for 5K, John now is a 4:27, 9:25, and 15:15 guy.  And those numbers are the least impressive things he has done for the program at North.  John has been the example of what hard work can do for your success.  And it has caught fire on this team.  His hard work was contagious, he brought his friends to the program, and he showed younger runners what work looks like.  This season has been a tough one for John, he has been constantly banged up never close to fully healthy but battling hard every step of the way.  He is that sort of tough that you really have to press to get him to admit that he is hurting, even though you can see him limp through workouts.  The quiet killer of our seniors is Mark Harris.  He grew by far the most respectable facial hair for the post season of anyone on the team.  Mark was always side by side with John on tough workouts in the summer for the past three years.  He was a constant at summer camp, who logged his miles and made sure to do things the right way.  Mark and John are the two current seniors who ran all four years.  They have been part of a team that finished 12^th at sectionals, 4^th at regionals, but also won two regional titles, a conference title and qualified for state twice.  The three other seniors who ran on Saturday were all late comers to cross country.  Ryan Belavich is a work horse.  Ryan has the honor of being built just like me, and we discovered last year that he typically needed a day of cross training a week to reduce some of his mileage.  Ryan, I think, came to enjoy these days on the bike…but initially hated them.  Ryan wanted to run, he always wanted to do what he could to do better.  Ryan joined the team as a sophomore, and really had a break out his sophomore year during track.  He was staple in our varsity for 2 years.  Demetri Panici is a modern day renaissance man.  He can sing, he is brilliant, he can play chess, he can v-blog, he can eat, he may be the most passionate person I have ever met, and he is extremely competitive.  Demetri joined us as a junior after two years of football.  He was a 400/800 runner who went from a 17:00 guy halfway through his junior year to running 15:11 at state this year.  Kyle Bechtold was a first year cross country runner, a soccer convert.  Kyle slide right into our lineup almost seamlessly, he was part of our three headed monster for most of the season, running incredibly consistent every time he toed the line.  As the season progressed I realized that Kyle has a little Eddie Haskell in him.  Whenever I interacted with Kyle he was always very polite and seemed to be pretty quiet.  I grew to learn that Kyle might have been the biggest jokester on the team.  Those five seniors have been a part of something very special at North.  But they were joined by our young guns on the roster.  Noah Healy was a 5:02 miler in junior high and through the first 3 weeks of cross country season his freshman year, I couldn’t believe it.  Until one specific hill workout.  Noah was running with our second group and it was almost as if he decided he wanted to show everyone what he could really do.  He crushed that workout and he has had a place at the top of our roster ever since.  In his three years he has been our 1^st or 2^nd runner in almost every meet.  Noah is quiet, but don’t let that fool you, he is highly competitive and has extremely lofty goals for himself.  Mike Trost is one of the most confident young men I have worked with, not only on the track or grass but just the way he carries himself in life.  Mike was dealt a bad blow this summer when he broke a bone in his leg, he missed the entire summer of training.  He was playing catch up all season, and he was finally able to catch up at Sectionals.  Mike ran the best race of his life at Sectionals and was a big reason we qualified for state this season.

The IHSA State meet is something that is truly special. Despite the fact that I personally think Detweiller is a terrible “cross country” course, it is however a perfect setting for a meet this scale.  You can feel the historic atmosphere that has hosted some of the greatest athletes in our sports history, tucked in among the tall trees is this pancake flat field built for speed.  We got down to the course Friday for the 2:00 coaches meeting and our annual alternates time trial.  A chance for those on the state roster to test their own fitness.  It is always a big boost for the guys racing Saturday, they get to see their teammates who they have been training with run fast.  If gives them big time confidence.  The guys ran great on Friday, our alternates are all sophs and juniors, and they rewrote their own PRs as well as the all-time times tops for the sophomore class.  PRs were run by Anthony Iozzo, Jeremy Stajkowski, Matt Jung, and Ethan Wesner.  The group of sophomores this year are pretty remarkable, most of them are rookies to XC, but they have the potential to been a force on the scene in the next two years.  We had a nice dinner at Avanti’s that evening and then team meeting with a wonderful letter from former North state competitor, Nick Niendorf.  At the team meeting we talked about the race plan for tomorrow.  Let’s go for it.  We got buried early at Sectionals and never recovered.  So we were going to put our noses in there early and see what happens.  Then off to bed.  Saturday is always a nice relaxing morning, on our shake out jog we ran past a dive bar called, The Last Hurrah.  I thought that was pretty fitting for our day.  We headed to the course at around 11, just in time to see Mary Jean Gilbert crush the field in the 2A race as I attempted (miserably) to parallel park the mini bus.  The guys were able to relax a little, watch the 2A boys, seeing fellow LW runner, Evan Mitchell finish 15^th for all-state.  Then warm up as our two girls competed. 

The feeling at the line was much different than last year, this year we felt as though we belonged in the mix. We have done this before, this moment was not going to be too big for us.  Our box was right in the middle, sandwiched between Minooka and Lake Zurich.  If we wanted to get out well, this was a good place for it.  We had 4 all-state runners in the boxes next to us.

The gun goes off and we do exactly as planned, we get out hard. I tried out a few new spots this year.  I watched the start right near the big pine on bus row, and then turned and saw the field turn past the pine for the first time before heading back to the triangle.  When they passed, Noah, Demetri, and Kyle were all in the top 50 with Mike and Mark not far behind.  John and Ryan followed close as well.  At that point in the race you can throw a blanket over the entire field.  But we knew we had accomplished goal 1, get out and mix it up with the top group.  I sprinted to the back to see the guys again.  They went through the mile in a similar spot, top 3 all in the top 65, 3 under 4:46 and 2 more under 4:53.  John was just under 5 and Ryan was just over it.  That’s fast for us, but we knew that’s what we would need.  The second mile really splintered our pack.  Kyle fell back to running with Mark and Mike while Noah and Demetri continued to press on near the front.  Both Noah (9:51) and Demetri (9:59) ran 2 mile PRs.  The guys knew that the third mile would be a fight, and they fought hard.  They had gotten out hard and were paying for it, but they gave what they had left to finish strong.  Noah and Demetri both ran PRs and finished 59 and 61, nearly 55 places higher than John finished last year as our top finisher at the state meet.  Next in was Mark, running a PR and passing 15 people in the last 100 meters, including Kyle who was fighting hard to finish.  Mike was in next, breaking 16 for the first time.  John and Ryan battled shoulder to shoulder to finish as the final cross country competitors in LWN history.

This year results were live online, which was awesome. As I walked back to team camp I was able to see we finished 20^th.  5 places better than last year, and the best finish in school history.  As I type this I smile knowing that the final team that North ever fielded was their best.  A legacy that these guys can be very proud of.  When the board announced that North would be closing at the end of the year, the following day at practice we talked about the fact that there are certain things we can’t control, but what we can control is making this a memorable season for the Phoenix and we certainly did that.