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October 16, 2005 - Palatine Programs Go 6 for 6 at MSL Conference

Saturday was another special day for all those associated with the Palatine boys and girls cross country teams.  For the second straight year, Palatine swept all six of the boys and girls team races as well as four of the six individual races.  All of the boys and girls train together over the summer, and it was really special to see our kids performing so well.  For most, it was their last race of the season, and for many it was the last race of a career.  I just want to thank all of the boys and girls for giving us coaches such a special treat and being such good kids to work with.

Above: The champs from Palatine celebrate after six MSL victories.

The two blockbuster races of the day were the boys and girls varsity.  In the boys, we pulled out a narrow 61-67-67 victory over Barrington and Prospect.  Barrington placed second on the 6th man tiebreaker.  For much of the race we were down, and we had to fight all the way to the line to win it.  Our all-conference athletes were Steve Finley (2nd), Glenn Morris (4th), Mat Smoody (11th), and Sagar Patel (17th).  Kevin O'Brien just missed the top 25 honor, finishing in 27th.  Dan Holbach was 33rd while a hurting Esberaldo Gonzalez finished in 45th.  For the boys, it was our third consecutive title.

The girls picked up their second straight conference title behind the revived running of Amy Laskowske and the return of Carly Bates.  Amy placed third after a stirring duel to the line with Chelsea Bolton from Fremd, finishing only 5 seconds off of the pace set by defending state champion Amber Stack of Wheeling.  Behind her, we put Carly Bates in 7th, and then the rest of our team was All-Conference.  I don't know the exact places, but Colleen Standridge, Kaitlin Millin, Torey Wright, Michelle Brunk, and Kaitlyn Peterson were all in the teens.

Picture Updates - Chris Wojdyla took a ton of great pictures, and I compiled them in a new Photo Gallery.  Enjoy!

History Updates - I have updated all of the History pages to reflect our finishes at yesterday's MSL conference.  There is a lot of great info about Palatine's MSL history, but also check out the conference meet results I have compiled for all the other years.  I added yesterday's 2005 results to that list.  Also, check out the updated list of MSL team champions, Palatine All-Conference runners, MSL individual champions, and MSL F/S and MSL JV history.

Mileage Updates - Check out the updated Week 9 miles and the Mileage Progression for the season.

Boys Varsity - Smoody and OB Save the Day with Huge Kicks

The boys varsity race was a wild one from start to finish.  Prospect took the team race out hard while we also had to contend with a Barrington group that went out more conservatively but moved strongly throughout the race.  It was an old-fashioned MSL barn-burner!  We faced several challenges heading into the race: Could Finley run with Craven?  Could Morris regain his championship form?  How would Smoody and OB react to the pressure of a big meet?  How would Esbo and Danny deal with their injuries?  Most of our guys came up big when we needed it, but it was no comfortable march to victory like last year.

Above: The varsity celebrates our third straight conference title.

Steve Finley runs best when he is aggressive, and he took the first mile out in 4:43, which is absolutely scorching at Busse Woods.  The first mile separated the men from the boys real quickly - Craven, Finley, and Havel started to duel.  Farina went out with them, but quickly dropped back into a great secondary pack battle with Morris, Ramirez from EG, Ancyzk from Prospect, Laugal (his teammate), and Carlson from BG.  Behind them, Prospect established great team position with Baptiste and Murray in the low teens.  By the 1 1/2 mark, it got worse with Addante, Prospect's 5th, moving up into about 20th place.  We were dead in the water at this point.  Esbo was fighting his lingering ankle injury while O'Brien and Holbach were mired in the mid-20s to low 30s.  Smoody and Sagar also got out too slow and were playing catch-up.

The race started to turn back in our favor going to the 2 1/2 mile mark.  Steve caught Havel near that point to grab a crucial team point while Morris had asserted himself in 4th place.  Glenn ran much like his old self, pushing hard and dominating in the middle of the race.  Smoody pulled alongside Murray by the 2 1/2, and I thought we had Prospect in our sights.  Sagar had moved to 16th in here while O'Brien had caught a slightly fading Addante.  At this point, though, I realized that there were Barrington guys moving all over.  They ended up with three in the top 10.

We train all year to be able to finish races, and all of our guys were passing coming into the chute.  Finley pushed past Havel and kicked hard to come as near to Craven as he has all year - 14:50 to 14:53.  Havel finished in 14:57.  All three of those are outstanding times on the normally slow Busse Woods course.  There was a gap after those three, but Glenn put himself well clear of the rest of the field to grab 4th in 15:21.  That time is only 10 seconds off of his winning effort from last year.  It is the first time this season he has been that close to a previous effort.  We got a couple bonus points from other teams in the last 300 as Ancyzk gave up some places to finish 9th.  That finish coupled with some heroics from our sophomores sealed the victory.  Smoody was side-by-side with Murray at the 400 to go, and he used that insane 800 meter speed to pick off Murray, Baptiste, Hanley, and Spain in the last part of the race to finish 11th.  What a champion!  Sagar also held off all charges to finish 17th.  To round out our effort, Kevin O'Brien gamely fought off Addante's last charge and then nearly caught Barrington's #5 Quarfoot.  Those late place changes saved the day.

The good news is that we won our third straight MSL title after winning only one in school history before this run.  The bad news is that Esbo may have a stress fracture in his ankle and may have to sit on the shelf for a week or two before state.  It is time for someone else to step up.  Next week, we host the Regional on our home course. 

Boys Frosh-Soph - Mourousias and Lopez Go 1-2

The betting action all week has been divided two ways - Alex or Eddie?  Both of these sophs have been coming on strong as of late, and both have earned spots on the top 12 for the championship phase of the season.  Neither guy disappointed, but Mourousias seized the race in the last 800 meters to run to victory in a nice time of 13:56.  Eddie finished second in 13:59.  Not bad for a couple of guys who were just mediocre freshmen last year - Alex placed 47th as a frosh in this race while Eddie did not run due to missing practice.  Their 1-2 finish led us to our fourth straight team victory, outdistancing Prospect 31-47.  That's not bad for a F/S team that ran its two best guys on the varsity level.  The only MSL team with a clearly better F/S team at this point is Hersey.

Alex and Eddie executed our race plan to perfection.  They ran relaxed and fast through the first 800, built up momentum going to the mile, and then surged up the incline going to the 1 1/2 mile mark.  Behind them, Tommy "The Tiger" Laskowske and Vlad Novikov kept moving up gradually to seize top 10 finishes.  Tommy grabbed fourth while Vlad finished in 8th.  Both of these freshmen ran under what Smoody ran last year to place 6th.  The future is bright for these guys!  The other huge story of the day was Paul Kwak's 16th place finish.  Kwak didn't even run last year in this race, but if he had the result would have been a finish in the 100s.  Paul has improved tremendously, and his hard work paid off with an All-Conference finish. 

The story after the top five was the good performance of our freshmen class.  Adam Bethke, Colin Morlock, and Luke Kierys ran well to finish 34th, 42nd, and 44th.  Including the four freshmen in the varsity race as 1-4, we have five of the top 17 freshmen in the conference.  The rest of our freshmen went out a bit too timidly and looked a bit freaked out by the pressure of the conference, but I am convinced that this group will be a great one by next year.  Juan Perez (74th), Cole Haas (77th), Kevin Meehan (85th), Justin Olson (87th), and Vania Acic (88th) all placed in the top half of the 170 person race.  None of the guys from this latter group had ever run seriously before 8 weeks ago so time and miles should help mold them into a tough team. 

Boys Junior Varsity - McCain and Dettloff Lead Huge JV Win

Mike McCain has been running great in the middle of his races all year, and Saturday proved to be no different.  Alex Soto and Ulises Reynoso took the early pace, and the team looked great at the mile.  At that point Matt Dettloff, Tom Barsella, and Mike Ducore were all in the top ten, and we had another group of Kevin LeClair, Kevin Yee, Chris Perry, and Matt Anderson in the top 20.  I loved how aggressively our guys attacked the race.  In the end, though, the Busse course wore down our early front-runners, and guys like McCain, Dettloff, and LeClair who went out a bit more conservatively really got rolling.

Above: The JV worship another in a long series of fake JV team awards.

McCain has been competing for a varsity spot for much of the season, and his late race surge proved that he should be the alternate for next week.  If Esberaldo cannot go, McCain will run.  For me, it was a proud moment to see McCain win his first ever cross country race.  His 16:34 was only seven seconds off of Holbach's time.  We have come such a long way since Mike was a wimpy freshman!  Behind him, Dettloff kept moving strongly to seize 2nd place in 16:40.  Both Soto and Ulises struggled a bit in the last 600 because they went out too hard, and they finished 5th and 9th.  Behind them, we got solid runs in the teens from Ducore, LeClair, Barsella, and Perry.  Andrew Bollman rounded out our award winners with his 25th place run.  I was especially proud of Kevin and Andrew.  Both of them ran their best races in the biggest meet of the season.  Way to go boys!  Our 31 points was just one point off of last year's winning total and secured us our third consecutive JV title.

October 9, 2005 - Quick's Marathon Story

Everyone tells me each year that they enjoy reading about my marathon adventures so I thought I'd give everyone the lowdown on what happened today.  My goal was to run 2:50.00.  I ended up placing 381st out of 32,900 runners with a time of 2:53.29.  That was over a five minute improvement from last year's 2:58.45.  I had a sub-2:50 going for me deep into the race.  I probably made a bad decision to go for it late in the race, and I died a rugged death in the last three miles.  I decided at Mile 19 though that I would go for the "dare to be great" situation.  I thought I could hold 6:20 pace all the way in and run 2:48.  I made it to about Mile 22 before I started to tie up.  Many thanks go out to Matt Dettloff and Kevin O'Brien for doing their Sunday run with me and giving me someone to talk to.  Special kudos go to OB for not letting me quit on myself when the going got real tough out by Comiskey.  I told OB that he has now seen me at my most desperate and nakedly tired.

October 8, 2005 - F/S and JV Win at St. Charles

The story at the St. Charles Invite this year had a lot to do with two great programs squaring off, well sort of.  Palatine and Glenbard South won all four team races.  We won the freshman-sophomore race with a scant 26 points while also taking the open race with 38 points to Glenbard's 47.  On the flip side, Glenbard South won the varsity with 24 points in a great run, and they loaded the freshmen open race with their best guys to win with 17 points.  Alas, we sat our varsity since they had raced twice a week for the last three weeks, but I think we will see those Glenbard boys down the road in a couple of weeks.  The matchup between #2 and #3 will have to wait until then.  By the way, Bruce MacTaggart took the varsity race with a course record time of 14:44 - what a great run for a great kid!

Boys Varsity - McCain Leads with a 12th place finish.

Each year, we run our junior varsity as our varsity team.  This year, the boys placed 5th overall.  I was very impressed with our results.  Mike McCain, our eighth man, ran tough to finish in 12th and was just off Glenbard's 6th man and 10 seconds off of their 5th.  Behind him, Ulises Reynoso and Matt Dettloff also grabbed top 20 finishes with 18th and 20th, respectively.  Kevin LecLair and Don Macatangay rounded out our scoring.  We also sat Tom Barsella, Alex Soto, and Mike Ducore in an effort to get them fresh for conference next week.  Overall, placing fifth was a triumph for the five guys that we ran.

Boys Open - Anderson and Perry Lead Us to Victory

Considering that our JV was running in the varsity, the task of winning went to our next group of guys.  They delivered big time.  Matt Anderson, Chris Perry, Kevin Yee, and Andrew Bollman finished 4, 5, 6, and 7 overall to secure the title for us over Glenbard South.  Brian Dankowski supported them as the 5th runner in 16th place.  Brian Cepuran and Matt Kulikowski also ran nice PRs and finished in the top 20.  Beating the JV from tough teams like Glenbard and Sandburg was a real achievement for these boys.  Great job!

Above: The JV Bombers pose with another trophy that they did not win.

Boys Freshmen-Sophomore - Lopez and Mourousias Go 1-2

Both Alex Mourousias and Eddie Lopez are fighting for spots in the top 12 varsity crew.  They both delivered another stunning effort, battling hard throughout to finish 1st and 2nd.  Eddie added to his momentum from Thursday to nip Alex by one second.  Our freshmen, Tommy Laskowske and Vlad Novikov, finished 4th and 7th to go with them.  The real hero of the day, though, was Paul Kwak.  Kwakzilla finished in 12th place, dropping his time from the previous year by over four minutes.  The boys won by a 26-33 score over Sandburg.

Above: Our F/S poses after a victorious team run at St. Charles.

Boys Freshmen Open - Kierys Places Top 10

We have won the freshmen open the last two years, but Glenbard South put all of their best freshmen in this race instead of the frosh-soph, and they dominated.  Still, we ran well to finish in third place.  Luke Kierys led us with his 10th place finish while Colin Morlock (15th), Cole Haas (16th, Juan Perez (17th), and Justin Olson (19th) all finished in the top 20.  Eric Colish, Kevin Meehan, Vania Acic, and Jacob Starcevich all broke 20 minutes over three miles for the first time.  In fact, every single freshmen ran better for three miles than he did over that same distance just three weeks ago.  For most guys, this was only their 2nd three mile race.

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 - I updated all of the History lists to reflect last Tuesday's running of "The Palatine."  The hot weather really kept anyone from running a great time.  You need to look no further than Morris dropping out due to heat exhaustion to see that it was not optimal for fast times.  Still, Finley and Sagar ran their best times.

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.

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.

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.