Recent News and Updates - E-mail cquick@d211.org

October 6, 2005 - Boys Win 4th Straight MSL West Title

Both the boys and girls teams won MSL West regular season titles last night with victories over Fremd.  For the boys, the 16-45 win ensured us of our fourth consecutive title.  None of the seniors on our team have been part of a dual meet loss - the winning streak is now at 24 meets.  Combined with the F/S, we are 47-1 in our last four years with the lone loss being to Barrington this year on the F/S level.  The boys will be looking to continue last night's success next weekend at the MSL Championship.  The meet will be hosted by Rolling Meadows at Busse Woods on October 15.

Results and History Updates - I put up the team splits for last night's meet in the Results section.  I also updated all of the Deer Grove lists to reflect results from last night - Overall Course Bests, Palatine Career Bests, Palatine Course Bests, and Palatine F/S Course Bests.

"The Palatine" Updates -

Boys Varsity - Smoody Runs to Victory with Finley's Help

The goal last night was to be aggressive and to start running with a championship mind-set.  The varsity has no weekend meet this week so everyone was excited to run.  Plus, the seniors had the incentive of facing our cross-town rival in their attempt to run the table for their careers.  This was probably the best dual meet performance I have ever seen from our boys.  Everyone up and down the lineup answered the call.

The boys ran aggressively last night through the mile, and it paid off with some great results.  Steve, Smoo, Glennard, Sagar, and Esbo hit the mile together in 4:50-4:51.  We moved great after that with only Esbo dropping off the pack before the two mile.  Smoo and Steve broke Glenn and Sagar a little bit in the back thousand, but we were still only spread from 9:58 to 10:04 at that point.  Smoo ran a 14 second two mile PR en route to running one of the top 10 best Palatine times on our course (#9).  His 14:50 is the fourth best sophomore time, behind only three efforts from Glenn.  Glenn's fastest as a sophomore was 14:39, and Smoody still has one more chance at this year's Regional.  Glenn struggled a bit in the middle of the race with the after-effects of heat exhaustion (from Tuesday), but both he and Sagar closed well.  Sagar ran 4 seconds faster in a dual than he did at the Palatine Invite.  Esbo also ran within one second of his best from the Invite.

Behind these guys, our depth guys put on a total show.  Kevin O'Brien fought gamely with Jared Hardy for awhile before losing to a half-miler kick.  Then, we threw four more guys in seven seconds, highlighted by a PR from Mike McCain and a monster effort from Eddie Lopez.  Eddie ran 14:59 last year for 2.5 miles and he ran 15:42 for the full-course last night.  Matt Dettloff also ran well to drop his PR 20 seconds to 15:51.  We then threw another pack of four in front of Fremd's #5 - Ducore, Barsella, D. Macatangay, and LeClair.  Other great PR's came from Andrew Bollman, Brian Dankowski, Brian Cepuran, Dan O'Brien, and Matt Kulikowski.  I was proudest of Dankowski.  He has struggled often with injuries over his four years, and he ran a PR in his final home meet.  To top it off, he won a tough battle to the finish to demonstrate the championship mind-set that we are trying to develop.

Boys F/S - Mourousias Ties Palatine Best F/S Time

With his spot in the top 12 assured by recent performances, I challenged Alex Mourousias to go out and break the Palatine course record for the short course.  He ended up tying Mat Smoody's earlier 13:03 in a dominating effort.  Behind him, Tom Laskowske and Vlad Novikov ran their normal consistent races to finish 2nd and 3rd.  The highlight up front was the continued improvement of Paul Kwak, who broke 14:00 for the first time to finish in 4th place.  Last year, Kwak was nearly the slowest guy on the entire team.  Now his hard work has enabled him to move up and become a factor in the scoring.  Andrew Kretschmar ran right on his PR to serve as our 5th man.

The other huge story of this meet was the continued improvement of our freshmen.  I challenged them to see how many guys we could get under 15:00.  We have been teaching them to run aggressively, and they obliged by attacking the race with a lot of courage.  Luke Kierys ran 14:34 and was trailed by teammates Lewis Conley (soph - 14:40), Cole Haas (14:42), Juan Perez (14:53), and Colin Morlock (14:58).  Both Cole and Juan had great races and deserved to break 15:00 for the first time.  All together, we have had 8 different freshmen under 15:00, which is the most we've had since we switched to the Deer Grove course.  Behind those guys, Justin Olson, Vania Acic, Eric Colish, and Jacob Starcevich all had nice races, running better or near their personal bests. 

October 2, 2005 - Palatine Wins Crete for Second Straight Year

Yesterday at Crete we scored 13 points over the seven flights to record our second straight victory and our fourth straight top five finish.  The quality of the meet has diminished a great deal in the last five years, especially with the start of the Lockport Invitational.  Naperville North and Neuqua Valley both dropped out this year, and it impacted the depth of the meet.  Still, we faced tough teams from Waubonsie Valley, Carl Sandburg, and Wheaton North.  We only beat Sandburg by 5 points two weeks ago at Peoria Notre Dame, and we ran better in relation to them this time.  It is always a joke to judge anything by time at Crete since the course changes each year, but we ran fairly well.  We won flights 5-6-7, and I think all three of those guys could have run much faster.  They all cruised in with fairly easy wins, especially Smoody.  We are still working on our top four, and Waubonsie did a nice job to win flights 2, 3, and 4.  Our guys led late in all of those races though, which is encouraging.  We went into the meet with three goals: score less than 20 points, win three flights, and lead in each race past the mile.  We met all three.

Above: The varsity and the coaches celebrate our 2nd consecutive Crete victory.

Picture Updates - I added two galleries of pictures courtesy of both Bryan Perry and Don Macatangay.  Check out boys and girls pictures from the Conant Dual and varsity shots from the Crete Monee Pow-Wow.

Mileage and Results Updates - I updated the miles for Week 7 as well as the mileage progression.  All of the results for Saturday's Crete meet can be found at Kompusport.com.  Just go to our Results section and click on the links to see each flight.

Boys Varsity - Smoody, O'Brien and Holbach win Crete Flights

Flight 7 - The mantra for yesterday's races was to control and relax the first mile.  The goal at Crete is to win races, not run fast.  Holbach tailed the Sandburg kid past the 1 1/2 mile mark, but he started putting the pressure on him and took off with about 1200 meters to go.  He ran well and is really starting to come on and help us.  His time was better than the 5th best finishers for both Sandburg and Waubonsie.

Flight 6 - Kevin O'Brien delivered a commanding performance in this race.  He restrained himself in the first mile to stay off the lead, and he took control just past the mile.  He ran away to a 10 second victory over a resurgent Winston Zack, who is returning from injury for Wheaton Warrenville South.

Flight 5 - We are trying to teach Mat Smoody to be patient and relaxed early in big races, and he listened well on Saturday.  He moved up into the lead pack at the mile, gradually started to put on the pressure in mile two, and then just dropped the hammer in the last 1600.  He had a ton left.  Put it this way - I made him run with the second best guy until the two mile, and his split there was 12 seconds slower than Esberaldo's.  He finished one second behind Esbo with a fresh-looking last mile.

Flight 4 - I probably should have run Smoody in this flight, but I was proud of Esbo's performance.  Again, he listened well and restrained himself early.  He got into a breakaway group of four guys who were still together at the two mile.  Waubonsie's Paul Happ took control at that point and ran away with the race.  Esbo faded to fourth before kicking past one runner in the last 800 to finish third.

Flight 3 - Sagar ran one of the most tactically ridiculous races in recent memory, but he still managed to be in the lead with 800 to go.  He got off to a terrible start and used a ton of energy getting pinned on turns and spurting through traffic.  Yohannes from Waubonsie won by five seconds while Sagar kicked hard with Sandburg's Sideras in the last 100 meters, but ended up in third.  It is just a matter of time before Sagar really has a breakout race.  He is finally recovering from a season-long struggle with IT tendinitis, and his workouts are improving.

Flight 2 - Glenn has been running better each week, and he is finally approaching full strength.  He led deep into this race, only losing to Gibbs in a kick in the last 100 meters.  He simply does not have the speed yet to close with a 1:56 800 meter guy like Gibbs.  That said, he ran with good rhythm and really pushed pace in the middle of the race.  The goal was to be in the lead at the 2 1/2 mile mark, and he accomplished that.  With five weeks until state, he is looking better and better.

Flight 1 - Finley has had a tough matchup each week of the season, and Saturday was no different.  Jon Popejoy again ran away from him in the middle of the race to score a 10 second win.  I was proud of Steve for hanging on after Pope broke away, and he held it together for the team to finish second.  He did not look very fresh this week and struggled with the courses myriad sharp turns and changes of direction.  It wasn't a smooth looking effort, but it got the job done.

September 25, 2005 - Palatine Invite Results

Our kids seem to rise to the occasion each year at the Palatine Invite, and this year was no different.  The boys varsity placed second behind nationally-ranked York.  We also managed to narrowly win the first in a series of tough MSL battles.  The final team scores looked like this for the top five: York 57, Palatine 110, Prospect 118, Barrington 129, and Hersey 233.  Assuming that we both make it to state, we will run Prospect four more times this year so that should be fun.  In the individual battle, Ryan Craven of Prospect seized the race just past the mile mark and never looked back.  His 14:06 was the #2 time ever behind Sean Macnamara's 14:00 from last year.  Steve Finley ran great to take 2nd place in 14:17.  That is the #3 time ever, and the best Palatine time by 15 seconds or so.  Eric Dettman of York was third while Hersey's super sophomore Kevin Havel was 4th.  We had the top four returnees from last year's state meet in the race.

Above: The varsity team and coaches celebrate a 2nd place finish at the Palatine Invite.

September 17, 2005 - Girls Win, Boys Second at Peoria

Both Palatine programs enjoyed another banner day at the Peoria Notre Dame Invitational on Saturday.  The girls finished 1st out of 44 teams, defeating three of the top teams in the state.  They scored 87 points to better Sandburg (101) and Naperville North (118).  On the boys side we finished second to a tough Glenbard South team by a score of 87-124.  Carl Sandburg gave us a good run to finish third with 129 while Elmhurst York's JV placed fourth overall. 

September 9, 2005 - Pirates Win Hard Fought Duals at Barrington

"Are you starting to believe?"

Each time that we go out to Barrington, we know that we will be given a tough race from both their boys and girls squads.  Thursday was no different.  The varsity boys won 26-31 behind a course record run from Steve Finley.  Finley ran 14:55 to break Glenn Morris' course record of 15:24 set two years ago.  The girls squad held off a charge by the Barrington girls in the first 1 1/2 miles to score an 18-42(?) victory.  I'm not sure about Barrington's score, but the ladies swept the top four behind Amy Laskowske's winning effort.  On the F/S boys level, our kids showed they have a lot to learn, taking a 24-31 loss from a talented Barrington squad.  It was our first F/S loss in three years.

September 3, 2005 - Palatine Boys and Girls Stellar at Hinsdale

The Palatine program had a great day Saturday at the Hinsdale Hornet-Red Devil Invitational.  We excelled on all levels in both boys and girls.  Both the boys and girls varsity won, the boys sophomores won, the girls open team won, and our boys freshmen placed second.  Individual winners included Amy Laskowske (girls varsity), Mat Smoody (boys sophomore), and Torey Wright (girls open).  Neuqua Valley gave us a great challenge in all three boys races, placing second in the varsity and the sophomore while winning the freshmen race by a ton.  The boys and girls competed well and showed that our time together in the summer was well-spent.  Way to go everyone!

August 31, 2005 - Palatine Boys and Girls Win Openers

Both Palatine teams won their opening dual meets against Prospect last night at Deer Grove East.  The girls scored a perfect 15 points with Amy Laskowske and Carly Bates leading the way.  On the boys side, we won 21-40 behind a strong run from Steve Finley.  Ryan Craven won the race overall in 14:27.  The results are a bit misleading since Murray and Ancyzk did not run for Prospect while we did not run Glenn Morris.  Look for this to be a much better match-up by the time Palatine Invite rolls around in three weeks.  We also won the F/S by a score of 22-33 behind a great first place run by Alex Mourousias.  I have updated the all-time lists for bests on each level at Deer Grove and stored a bunch of old info in the Archive section.  Check out those lists in the History section.