Sunday, December 17 - Final Cross
Country Updates
Picture Updates
- I added two new picture galleries. First, I put together pictures
from my mom and Lori Laskowske to create a photo gallery from the
IHSA State
meet. Second, I took a bunch of my mom and dads pictures and
created a photo gallery of all
Madeline Grace
pictures. The latter aren't really CC pics, but this is my site so
you just have to bear with me being a proud dad. Mostly, the baby pics
are for friends and family, but I thought a few CC moms (and maybe dads)
would want to have a look!
Coaches Update - I updated the
Coaches page with new information from this
year's results. Also, on January 13th, Fred Miller will be inducted
into the Illinois Track and Cross Country Coaches Hall of Fame. Anyone
who wants to attend can go. I'll put more details about the induction
ceremony out here later when January rolls around. I also posted a new
sweet picture of Fred and I. We've had a great time coaching together,
and our record with the kids shows how much fun we are having.
Polar Bear Shuffle Results - On
Saturday, December 16th, the men of Palatine conducted the first annual
Polar Bear Shuffle in Deer Grove West. The race was handicapped
according to 5K PRs and was 5.8 miles in length, covering the entirety of
the perimeter trail. The overall winner was an under-seeded Coach
Quick, but Sagar Patel had the fastest time in 31:13. James Macatangay
won the alumni division by being the only alumni to successfully follow the
entire course. He bested his roommate, Brian McLain, by a staggering
31 minutes. Rumor has it that McLain may have been lost and allegedly
met Rob Conley's friend from a couple of years ago. Allegedly.
Check out the results and pics of the day later on this week.
State Meet Recap - Palatine Pirates Place
6th at 2006 State Finals
The boys were relaxed heading into the state
meet after winning the Schaumburg Sectional the week before without the
services of junior All-Conference runner Kevin O'Brien. Kevin had
struggled for two weeks with an IT band problem, but he was determined to
run at state and be at his best. His presence certainly gave us a
lift, and it was good to have him back in the lineup. I worried that
the time off had ruined his sharp edge, but OB is a tough one, and I knew
that he would try his best.
We broke from Box 29, which put us right in
the thick of things. You can see from the picture above that we were
right next to York and three boxes away from St. Charles North. Evan
Jager, the eventual champion, and Kevin Havel, the runner-up, were also
nearby. Our plan was to get out at the half in the times that we had
discussed. Smoody and Sagar targeted a 2:15 split while the rest of
the guys dialed in on the 2:18-2:22 range. Times were blazing at the
800. All of our guys came through fast and still seemed to be buried.
Smoody hit the 800 in 2:12 and all five of our guys were through at or under
2:20.
The first mile of the race was totally
smoking. Smoody and Sagar hit the mile in 4:40 and 4:41, Dettloff hit
4:49, OB was 4:50, Alex and Eddie were 4:56, and Tommy was 5:08. We
had trained all year to run these splits and still be ready to maintain for
the rest of the race. The problem this year was that other teams were
ready as well. At the 1 1/2 mark, I knew that we were running fast,
but we were not in great position. I felt that gnawing feeling that a
CC coach only gets when there is a gap too big in the lineup. Sagar
went by the 1 1/2 in 9th place with Smoody in tow around 14th, but the gap
to Dettloff felt big, and it was. OB was ahead of Mourousias, but he
was nowhere near his normal running position with Dettloff. The last
three years, I had felt an amazing feeling at that point of the race, but
this year I was filled with trepidation. We had gone out fast, and our
guys were still buried.
At the two mile mark, our splits were still
great. Smoody (9:42), Sagar (9:43), Dettloff (9:59), OB (10:09), and
Alex (10:11) were in solid position to bring home a trophy. The
problem was that we hadn't finished well all year in the final kick, and OB
was not in his normal running position. We squeaked out wins all year
with OB and Dettloff running together and our 5th man doing his best to stay
within 45-60 seconds of our #1 guy. At state we ran with two fifth men
due to OB's injury.
At the 2 1/2 mark, Smoody had passed Sagar
and was in 10th place, looking like he could charge into the top 7-8.
I hoped that he could kick, but in all of Smoody's best CC races he has
little left at the end. In the picture above, you can see him kicking
with Deerfield's Noble Schermerhorn in a finishing battle for 11th place.
Mat would end up 12th in a remarkable time of 14:35, the 4th best in
Palatine history. Sagar hung on for dear life after his 9:43 opening
two miles, and he managed to keep 14th place and just hold off a ton of
kicking opponents. With two All-State finishes in the bag, I thought
we might be home free. The problem was that all of the contenders also
had at least two great guys up top: York (8, 9 ,15), St. Charles North (26,
28), Schaumburg (17,23), and Neuqua Valley (3, 20). In essence, our
front runners earned us no points against the three teams that would
eventually trophy.
The battle thus went down to the depth guys
on the top teams, and my heart sunk as I saw streams of guys going by all of
our 3-4-5 runners. I am convinced that we lost a trophy from the 600
meter mark into the finish. Gobs of guys were passing Dettloff and
Mourousias, and OB had a lot of trouble in the last mile and didn't look as
sharp as usual. I wanted to believe that we had trophied, but I knew
that York had beaten us and I thought that Sandburg had kicked past us
heading into the finish. When I saw Coach Macnider from Schaumburg, I
got more down because he was at the finish line and knew that his kids had
run great. All year we had beaten Schaumburg, but they always came
back on us and made it close with great kicks. Those great kicks won
them a trophy in the last 400 meters of the race. When coupled with
the great run by St. Charles North and the solid pack race of Waubonsie
Valley, that put us 6th in the state.
Our top five placed 12th (14:35), 14th
(14:41), 66th (15:12), 98th (15:24), and 108th (15:31). In most years
those times would win a trophy, but Illinois is just too tough now.
Six of my seven guys ran PRs, but we got smoked in the last 800 by a bunch
of teams that we had beaten during the year. I am incredibly proud of
this team, and not disappointed with our finish. The only problem that
lingers in my head is that we beat Schaumburg four times, and they got third
in the state. This finish is obviously to their credit, but it hurts a
bit more when you know that a team who won a trophy was beatable. We
just didn't get it done when it mattered most.
I'll remember the 2006 season as a
transitional one when we tried to move on from the athletes who established
the distance running renaissance at Palatine. Glenn Morris was at the
core of this rebirth, and it was a challenge to move on without him and
prove that we could be champions still. In the end, we won the MSL
West, the MSL, and the Sectional, placed 6th in the State, and had two
athletes earn
All-State honors. Most programs would take that any day of the week,
and our goal in the future is to continue to give ourselves opportunities to
win the big one. It is tough to win a state trophy in Illinois, and
our athletes are dedicated to keeping the program up to the expectations set
by former and recent athletes. We will be great again next year with
five athletes returning, and the state will be ultra-competitive.
Let's hope that we can keep training hard and being good people. The
results and the fun will then take care of themselves.
Above: The Quick family poses after
the 2006 IHSA State finals. Meredith is conspicuously absent because
she was home taking care of Madeline grace, who was born just three weeks
prior to the race.
Sunday, November 5 - Pirates Place 6th
at State with Two All-Staters
Our season did not end quite how we would
have liked on Saturday, but our boys ran hard and placed a solid 6th in the
IHSA State meet. On a fast day when it took "great" to win a trophy,
we just ran good. Six of our seven athletes ran Detweiller course
bests, but it simply was not enough. The individual highlights
certainly had to be Mat Smoody and Sagar Patel grabbing All-State honors.
Mat placed 12th in 14:35 while Sagar was 14th in 14:41. Both of these
guys came to play and deserved the accolades that they earned.
Behind them, we ran okay, but it simply was
not good enough to win a trophy on a day that saw the fastest times since
the 1970s. A staggering 40 guys broke 15:00, and Matt Dettloff's 15:12
was only good for 66th place. Kevin O'Brien returned from injury to
place 95th in 15:25 while Alex Mourousias rounded out our scoring in 108th
with a 15:31. Eddie Lopez (15:51) and Tom Laskowske (16:11) were our
6th and 7th runners. It was obvious that OB was not at his sharpest
after sitting out much of two weeks with a suspect IT band, but I was proud
of his toughness and applaud his strong mental approach to dealing with a
really untimely injury. I know it affected his race, but all of our
3-4-5 runners needed to do better.
York won with 60 points, and they were
followed by St. Charles North (165), Schaumburg (170), Sandburg (184), and
Waubonsie Valley (196). We had beaten all of these teams but York and
Waubonsie (whom we hadn't faced) at previous points in the season so that
makes the loss sting a bit more. I told the boys back in June that
either us or Schaumburg was going to win a trophy, but not both. We
beat them four times by small margins, but they beat us when it mattered
most and that is a credit to them. Still, we had a great year, and
many teams would love to be 6th in the state. We won the MSL West with
an undefeated record, won the MSL Conference for the fourth straight year,
and grabbed only the fourth IHSA Sectional title in school history.
Along the way we also won the Hinsdale Hornet-Red Devil Invite, the Peoria
Notre Dame Invite, and the Crete-Monee Pow Wow. We had five athletes
place All-MSL, three place All-Regional, three place All-Sectional, and two
place All-State. The success of this program has been firmly
re-established, and we hope to keep it that way in the years to come.
Keep running boys, and keep those big dreams alive!
History Updates - I updated the
list of Detweiller
state times, the
top 50 Detweiller best times, the
All-State and
Team honor roll, and
the Invitational Records.
Mat Smoody's 14:35 ties him for 4th in school history all-time with state
champion Bob Watson, and is only 5 seconds behind Tom Johnson's 14:30, which
is the best junior time ever. Sagar's 14:41 puts him at 10th all-time.
Our combined record this season in all varsity competitions (excluding St.
Charles where the varsity did not run) was 192-7. In the last four
seasons, we have gone 201-4 (2003), 224-2 (2004), 207-4 (2005), and 192-7
(2006) for a four year total of 824-17. What a staggering testament to
the persistent hard work of our athletes.
I'll post more later about the race itself...
Sunday, October 29 - Palatine Boys and
Girls Win Sectional Titles
In another banner day for both programs, the
Palatine boys and girls ran to IHSA Sectional championships. Both
races were close with the girls winning 94-99 over Barrington and the boys
winning 69-77 over Schaumburg. What a great validation of all the hard
work we do together during the season and over the summer! Both teams
have now advanced to the IHSA State meet next Saturday, November 4.
There will once again by a student fan bus, and all of our parents and fans
are invited to come and see both teams fight it out for state trophies.
Over the last three years, our programs combined have won five state
trophies, and we hope to continue that success on Saturday.
Boys Sectional Race - Pirate Team Comes
Through
We faced a number of challenges after a weak
race in last week's IHSA Regional, and the boys surely proved that they
still have a lot of fight left within them. Junior Eddie Lopez
returned to the lineup after a week long suspension for grades, and he
proved to be the determining factor in the race. His absence in the
Regional left a huge hole in the lineup, but his 31st place finish put us
over the top in the team race against Schaumburg. We still sat out
All-Conference runner Kevin O'Brien, but it was just a precautionary move.
OB warmed up and did sprints from the box with his spikes on, but I promptly
sat him down to save his leg from any trauma previous to the state meet.
He will surely be in the lineup on Saturday for the state meet, and our team
proved its strength by going out and winning the Sectional without him.
Monday, October 23 - Pirates Advance to
Sectionals
We did not have our best race of the year at
the IHSA Regional at Wheeling, and the team will be out to rectify that weak
showing as the full squad returns to action on Saturday in the IHSA
Sectional. The team we ran performed poorly and a young and talented
Hersey squad nipped us 40-44 to hand us only our second loss of the season.
The race was not pretty, but we made the right decisions about who to run.
Kevin O'Brien, our normal #3-#4 man, was held out due to a minor injury
while Eddie Lopez, our #5-#6 man, sat out the meet due to a team suspension.
It felt bad to lose, but this will help us regain our focus heading into the
last two weeks. I railed pretty bad on the guys after the race because
our junky week of practice confirmed my instinct - that we were not going to
be ready to get the job done on Saturday.
Sunday, October 15 - Palatine Wins the
MSL for 4th Year in a Row
My great week as a father and coach ended
with the boys varsity winning our fourth consecutive MSL title. This
now gives us five titles in school history to go along with our 19th MSL
division title. The boys ran well, but really demonstrated that our
consistent race is good enough to win in big meets. Our 1-5 split was
45 seconds, and both our #3 and #4 were within 28 seconds of our #1 runner.
Those tightened up splits bode well for this team in the big meets to come.
We scored 42 points to outdistance Schaumburg (56), Hersey (102), Prospect
(113), and Hoffman Estates (134). Our five teams are in the driver's
seat with respect to getting out of the Schaumburg Sectional.
Above: The Palatine varsity and coaches
celebrate our 4th straight MSL title.
Check out those faces on Sagar and Eddie.
Saturday, October 7, 2007 - St. Charles
and Crete Updates
We had another eventful weekend at St.
Charles as our boys ran well and had a great time. I continue to be on
baby watch heading into the MSL Conference week so I am not sure if I will
see everyone there or not. Any way you cut it, it is shaping up to be
a great week, and many of our guys are rounding into peak form at the right
time of year. Our JV guys took 3rd today in the varsity section of the
St. Charles Best Invite while our F/S ran to a thrilling 51-56 win over Carl
Sandburg. Lastly, but certainly not least, our men in the open race
came out with a domination victory, placing 14 guys in the top 20 to win
with 19 points. Our varsity sat out today, per our usual schedule, but
they will return to action next weekend at the MSL Conference meet and will
be looking for a 4th consecutive conference title. We hope to see
everyone at Busse next Saturday.
Crete-Monee Pow Wow - Pirates Run to 3rd
Straight Title
It perhaps says something about the
diminished stature of this meet when we win it, and I don't bother to even
post about it. The meet is atrophying badly, mostly due to course
changes and some inept management decisions. The course was new again
this year due to the construction of a new high school on the site of the
old course. My complaint is less about the new woods loop, and more
about the 45 degree turns sprinkled along the course, especially the one at
the finish. The course is an accident waiting to happen for a good
team, and this will be our final year at the Crete-Monee Pow Wow.
The good news was that we became the first
team ever to win the Pow Wow in three straight seasons. Despite the
meet's diminshed stature, that is still a good thing. We scored 20
points to outdistance state-ranked teams New Trier and Lincolnway East.
We also placed five guys in the top 11 of the JV open and would have won
that had it been scored. Matt Dettloff won Flight Four to be our only
flight winner, but his glory was robbed by an insidious plot that ended up
with co-captain and supposed friend Kevin LeClair getting announced with the
win at the awards ceremony. LeClair's sick plot also got the names
switched in the official results, and he will probably go down in history as
the Flight 4 winner for 2006. And you guys are friends... Afer
Detty's great race, we had three other guys place second (Smoody in Flight
2, Eddie in Flight 5, and Juan in Flight 7). Sagar Patel placed 4th in
a tough Championship Flight while OB was 3rd in Flight 3 and Ulises was 6th
in Flight 6.
Friday, September 29, 2006 - Palatine
Wins MSL West
Thursday night, the boys won the MSL West
title for the 5th consecutive year after squeaking out a thrilling 27-28
dual meet win over Schaumburg. This was certainly the best dual meet
that I have ever been a part of, and it was wonderful to see two evenly
matched and hungry teams go head to head like that. It took the best
race ever by a Palatine team at Deer Grove East to win, and that is a
tribute both to our kids and the quality of competition. We put four
runners under 15:00 for only the second time ever, and Mat Smoody (14:23)
and Sagar Patel (14:24) posted the 3rd and 4th best Palatine times ever
behind only Steve Finley.
The win moves our dual meet winning streak to
31 in a row. We have not lost in MSL dual meet action since Schaumburg
beat us in 2001. I know the alumni are proud of this record, and it
was thrilling to see our guys pull it out for them and each other.
Check out the updates in our History section. I updated the
All-Time best list,
the Palatine best
list and
career list, and the
Palatine F/S best
list as well as the
Division Champions page. Spain's time was the #7 ever run while
Smoody and Sagar put times in at 12th and 15th.
Sunday, September 24, 2006 - Pirates
Take Second at Palatine
For the fourth year in a row, the Palatine
boys varsity team placed second in the Palatine Invite to Elmhurst York (full
results). The boys ran well, though, narrowly downing current
state powers Carl Sandburg (108 pts) and St. Charles North (115 pts) as well
as five or six other ranked teams. The 49-104 loss ends our undefeated
season, but our nice run indicates that we are part of an elite group of
teams who could win a state trophy at year's end. Five of our seven
guys ran course personal bests in the sloppy conditions with Sagar Patel
(14:34, 6th place) and Mat Smoody (14:36, 7th place) finishing in the top
ten of an elite field.
Monday, September 18, 2006 - Varsity
Wins at Peoria
For the third time in four years, the boys
varsity won the prestigious Peoria Notre Dame Invite (full
results). This year's edition was an exciting race which saw the
Pirates win in a squeaker 101-102 over MSL rival Schaumburg. Both
teams defeated the consensus #2 team in the state Sandburg, who placed third
with 121 points (although they did hold out one of their best guys).
Naperville North was fourth with 133 while Lincoln-Way East was fifth with
147. Conference rival Hersey placed sixth with 241 points.
Monday, September 4, 2006 - Boys
Varsity Wins at Hinsdale
The boys and girls cross country teams
enjoyed another successful Saturday at the Hinsdale Hornet-Red Devil
Invitational. As usual, both teams were factors in all of the races.
The program placed 1st in the varsity, 2nd in the sophomore, and 3rd in the
freshmen. The girls finished 2nd in the varsity and 1st in the open.
All of the results are linked in our Results
section.
