April 7, 2010 - Outdoor Track Opens with Barrington, Schaumburg Triangular

The turn away from indoor season has been a pleasant one, and our distance group has been able to get in some great work and get healthy all at the same time.  We are still training through our early triangular meets with a goal of being ready for the prime competition season that kicks off with the Wheaton South ABC meet and then continues straight into the MSL West Division meet and the Palatine Relays.  We experienced a ton of positives in our first outdoor meet while also seeing a lot of holes that will need some quick fixing if we are to achieve our team goals for the season.

I'll get to the reporting in a bit, but I just wanted to drop a quick word about Alec Bollman.  Alec signed his National Letter of Intent last week to attend Iowa State on an athletic scholarship.  I am very proud of Alec's hard work and commitment to our program, and he is a deserving scholarship recipient.  To punctuate his signing week, Alec also decided to destroy our workout record for "The Palatine."  The new mark now stands at 27:55!  If you have ever run "The Palatine," you know how difficult that is.  I'll give the full run-down and splits a bit further down, but it suffices to say that Alec now owns all three of the Grass Loop records, including a 4:50 final grass loop before a 5:07 1600 meter closer on the track.  The grass loops are exactly 1500 meters so that means he closed the last 3100 meters in 9:57.  Very wicked.  This also shows that his recent (and future) race results are no aberration.

Performance List Updates - Check out new season bests from our first outdoor meet.

Barrington, Schaumburg Triangular - Solid 800 Meter Times Headline First Meet

The team story in this meet was the continued emergence of our field event crew and the return to action of a few of our injured seniors.  Tyler Jones had a huge impact in his first meet of the year, throwing 154' in the discus and 46' 7" in the shot put.  The weight crew dominated in general with 5 guys over 40' (Chad Bobbit 49', Adam Dreger 44') and three guys over 130' in the discus (Jones 154', Howe 137', Bobbit 134').  Senior Mykyta Cheshko also got into the act, winning the high jump in 6' 1" and posting a 19' 4" jump in his first-ever long jump competition.  David DiCristofano bettered that as he launched a solid 19' 9" leap.  We also had guys clear 10' 6" and 11' 0" in the pole vault.

4 x 800 meter relay - We used this meet as a workout, and both Chano and Alec kicked off their busy night in this relay.  I had them both working on their speed by running the 4 x 800-800-400-4 x 400 combo.  Alec looked smooth and in control en route to an unchallenged 1:57.1 split, and the race was ours from then on out.  Reuben Frey dusted off some rust with a 2:12 split and was followed by solid workout runs from Anthony Gregorio (2:11) and Chano (2:07).  Our frosh-soph crew got lost in space with Mundeep Bawa running 2:26 for the best split of the foursome.

3200 meter run - Coach Gorman loaded this race with a ton of his promising returnees for next season as well as his senior star Chris Cogswell.  Schaumburg countered with 800 meter specialist Connor Prizy.  Both teams should have paid us to rabbit this race since we ran a tactically poor group race, taking the pace out way too fast in the first 200 and 400 meters, and the end result was a disappointing group of efforts.  We need to be more patient and remember that the 3200 can't be won by running all out from the gun.  Tim Johnson finished third to match his PR of 10:03 while Ryan McGough ran a 10:28 PR in his first (and he hopes only) shot at the distance this season.  Prizy kicked away to win the race in a solid 9:52 clocking.

800 meter run - I gave Alec the same challenge that I used with Mat Smoody during his last two years in high school: go out and break 2:00 every time you run an 800.  He responded admirably to the challenge, doubling back from his sweet relay split to hit 1:59.8 and win the open.  Behind him, Drew Shaler ran a fabulous race to lower his open 800 PR from 2:12 to 2:08.1.  Chano finished third in 2:09, and Peter Tomkiewicz also destroyed his 800 meter PR in dropping down to 2:15 from 2:24.

The other great story in this race was the continued emergence of our freshmen 800 meter runners.  Clingerman provided the first piece of the puzzle with his sizzling 2:06.9 split at Proviso in our school record 4 x 800, but a bunch of other pieces started to fall into place last night.  Zach Stella dropped his PR from 2:20.0 to 2:12.8 while Rob Hank (2:16), Christian Zambrano (2:17), Jordan Jarrett (2:17), Matt Szablowski (2:18), and Adam Vanderweil (2:23) all dropped time and looked great.  Rob and Jordan were running their first open 800 races in high school, and I also think we have two other  potentially great youngsters in sprint guys Ulises Alcaraz and Antonio McBean.  Joe Mars also joined the track squad two weeks ago (after a long courtship), and I guarantee that he has some massive speed to burn as well.  I love building depth at this event, and the Holy Grail for us this season will be the 8:32 freshman school record set way back in 1973.  Can you hear us knocking Chuck Bell?

400 meter dash - I brought back a ton of guys into this race for the workout part of the meet, and Alec (54.8), McGough (55.3), Clingerman (56.8), Gates (57.0), Chano (59.2), and Joe Mars (59.3) all shined. 

1600 meter run - Schaumburg brought most of their distance guys back from the 4 x 800 into this event while we did not so the results were a bit lopsided.  Our best run of the night certainly came from Anthony Gregorio as he improved his lifetime best to 4:43 and placed fourth behind Lesiewicz, Prizy, and Perry from SHS.  Reuben Frey ran a solid 4:50 in his first meet in over a month while Peter Tomkiewicz (4:51) and Brian Sund (4:55) ran lifetime bests.

In the F/S race, a ton of our younger guys ran big PRs.  The three big barrier crushing races were delivered by Emanuel Rosales (5:34), Tyler Squeo (5:48), and Lucas Bombal (5:49).  All three broke under 6:00 for the first time.  Other PRs came from Mundeep Bawa (5:10) and Harmeet Bawa (5:26).  Kyle Norris neared his 6:26 PR from CC season in his first race of the season, clocking a 6:33 in his return from injury.

Other - I just wanted to say a few words about Kendall Cox's night.  Kendall runs both distance and hurdles, and he had one heck of a night.  He tied his 110 hurdle PR with a 17.5, broke under 45 seconds in the 300 intermediates for the first time with a 44.7, and then demolished his 400 PR with a 55.8 split in the 1600 relay.  Another performance of note for the team was Willie Filian's 53.5 open 400 time in his return from injury.  It is great to have one of our best competitors back in play.

The Palatine - Bollman Demolishes the Overall Record with a Stunning 27:55

And we all thought he was hard to live with before.  Tons of All-State runners have taken a shot at Jorge Calvillo's disputed 28:39 (I didn't used to set up cones, thus leading to some possible "soft turns") from the 2003 track season, but to no great success.  Glenn Morris, Kevin O'Brien, and Mat Smoody all clocked in the 28:40 range in their best attempts, but no one could ever quite unseat Calvillo.  One caveat is that I don't run The Palatine during track as much due to the hectic spring field schedule and the sloppiness of the terrain.  On Saturday, though, Bollman put it down from the gun and broke the record by a ridiculous 44 seconds.  He broke the records for all three of the 1500 meter grass loops, including a ridiculous 4:50 on the last one (that time might be off - a 2:50 on the track and then a 4:50 1500?).  Hard to believe.  Splits included:

3:47 (1200) - 5:05 - 76 (400) - 5:00 - 2:50 (800) - 4:50 - 5:07 (1600)

The rest of the workout was solid, highlighted by the fact that our sophomores finished 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th to claim spots 2, 5, 7, and 11 on the all-time sophomore list.  Anthony Gregorio became only the second soph ever to break 30:00 with his 29:56 clocking.  With Marcus Garcia quickly returning to health, that will give us five dangerous weapons in the soph class.  We also had top ten times on the freshman list from Brian Smith and Adam Vanderweil.  Reuben Frey was our top junior with a time of 31:18.

For more in depth results check out the Workout splits and then see the updated All-Time bests and the Best of the Rest along with the lists for Career, Senior, Junior, Sophomore, and Freshman times.

March 31, 2010 - Proviso Classic, Top Times Updates

This past weekend marked the end of our indoor campaign.  The track season is a marathon rather than a sprint (a bit ironic, eh?), and you have to take that into account when evaluating performances.  We are more low key during indoor season.  After Alec ran a solid, but not spectacular, race at Illinois Wesleyan this weekend, I looked at the date on my watch and realized that he still had two months - nine weeks of training and racing - before he hit the state championship meet.  Hopefully, we make some huge progress in our outdoor races and come firing on all cylinders by the end of the outdoor season when the meets matter the most.  Our lists look very solid for an indoor season, especially one where we've been able to run on a track for only 2-3 weeks.  I'm excited and ready to see both our distance group and our team as a whole start to come together.

Performances Lists - I updated our lists to include Proviso and IPTT action.

Illinois Prep Top Times - Bollman Places 3rd in 1600 Meter Run

We qualified for this meet in the 4 x 800, the 3200 meter run, the 800 meter run, and the 1600 meter run, but I decided to leave the rest of our guys behind and just let Alec take a rip at our school record in the 1600 run.  Chano tweaked a tendon in his ankle at the MSL meet so I had him train and rest rather than accept his 3200 bid.  Leaving the 4 x 800 home proved a good decision as our sophomores were able to focus on the Friday night meet.

1600 meter run - Alec set his indoor PR at York early in March, and all I was looking for in this one was some progress in his fitness.  I left the race plan up to him and wanted to see how he'd react against a tightly-bunched field, some athletes he had never raced before, and our conference foe Angelos Karkalis of Rolling Meadows.  Angelos certainly got the best of Alec on Saturday, running a huge PR of 4:14 to win the race and take the early mantle of favorite for the 1600 meter outdoor title.  Nico Composto from Loyola was second in 4:17.81 while Alec settled for third in 4:18.91.

Alec looked a bit flat coming back from his race on Friday night at Proviso, and he never quite got into the thick of the lead pack.  He trailed through the 800 in a 2:11 split and was not close enough to react to Karkalis' big move just past the 800 meter mark.  Alec stuck around in a group of guys competing for 3rd, 4th, and 5th before digging down and unloading a 30 second final lap to seize third place.  He finished only one second behind Composto, yet it took a big kick to even get that close.  I'm glad we raced on back-to-back days, and I was really proud of Alec for kicking at the end even when he had struggled a bit during the race.  I'll bet that he runs better the next time around.  His splits were 65-65-64-62 with all of the tenths added on.  Mat Smoody's school record of 4:17.1 lives on, but Alec clearly put himself in the same equation with other Palatine greats.  Jon Cermak, Mat Smoody, Steve Finley, and Mark Visk all ran 4:17-4:18 indoors their senior year before grabbing big hardware in the outdoor state meet.

Proviso Classic - School Record in F/S 4 x 800 Highlights a Solid Night

I had a much more positive reaction about our team's effort both during and after this meet than I did the week before.  Chad Bobbit came up huge in winning the shot put with a lifetime best of 50' 11 1/2".  Mykyta Cheshko cleared 6' 1" in his first meet of the season to get us second place in the high jump, Trevor Peters cleared 11' 0" in the pole vault, and Manny Del Rio scored some triple jump points with a jump of 39' 2".  It was great to see our field event guys starting to pull more points, and we ended up sixth out of fifteen teams.

F/S 4 x 800 meter relay - It's a bit odd to say, but we set this race up as the marquee event of the night.  With Alec running the 1600 only at the Top Times meet, I decided not to field a 3200 meter relay there and run our top sophomores in a school record attempt at Proviso.  Luckily for us, York showed up with their best four and the intent to run fast.  Throw in Buffalo Grove who was gunning for their 8:34 school record, and the conditions were ripe for a demolition of our 8:37.4 school indoor record.

The race played out beyond my wildest dreams.  Although York nailed us behind an impressive anchor run from their freshman star Alex Mimlitz, our 8:28.28 FAT clocking improved our school record by nine seconds.  After a timid start, Tim Johnson recovered and got us up near the lead, running a 2:06.4 lifetime best.  He handed off to our freshman wild card, Andrew Clingerman.  Clinger has been training and racing with the varsity since day one of this season and has taken his share of lumps early on.  His PR was only 2:15 before this, but he ran a perfect race to record a 2:06.9 split, which was beyond my wildest dreams for this race.  I could not have been prouder of Andrew's competitiveness and poise.  He proved that learning lessons can only be done through racing and that sooner or later you figure out how the 800 can be run.  What a leg.

Andrew handed off to Anthony Gregorio, who switched out of long distance mode long enough to destroy his 2:14 PR with a strong 2:08.8.  Tony ran a competitive and gutsy race, battling York's guy throughout.  At no point in any of the four legs did a York or Palatine guy have any more than a 1/2 to 1 second advantage.  Tony got it to Tim Meincke right on the heels of York's anchor, and Tim relaxed and rode behind him for 600 meters.  At that point, he made a huge surge to take the lead.  Only a tough final charge from Mimlitz could stop us from winning, and we settled for a 1/2 second loss behind Meincke's sweet 2:05.8 split.  All four guys ran lifetime bests.

Varsity 4 x 800 meter relay - I gave four of our varsity and JV guys a chance to earn future open 800 spots in this one, but no one had a particularly great race.  Wojdyla, Shaler, Roehrborn, and Kuerschner all ran between 2:10-2:12. 

3200 meter run - I had planned to run Chano and Jeff Larson together here, but I really didn't want to test Chano's achy ankle on an indoor track.  I plugged in Peter Tomkiewicz in his spot.  Neither guys ended up with a lifetime best, but Jeff did record a new indoor PR of 10:12.  I thought both guys fought hard, but the early pace was much too fast for the entire field, and our guys suffered badly.  A 31 second opening lap and 66 second opening quarter doomed both of our guys to running backsliding splits - the kind where every quarter gets a bit slower than the one before.  Peter ended up out of the points in 10:28, but Jeff scored a fifth place finish for the team and seems to be on the edge of breaking out with a little bit more patience and attention to proper pace.

800 meter run - Alec's goals for the weekend were twofold.  I wanted him to experience running on back-to-back days to simulate the state meet, and I hoped that he could win an 800 meter race.  He came through the quarter at 58 and looked solid, but he shifted into a relaxed miler mode in the third 200 and let a speedy Batavia runner stay around long enough to use his speed in the last 100 meters.  In the end, Alec ran an indoor PR of 1:58.01, but lost at the tape by .05 seconds.  It was a good lesson that good milers are not always as fast as good 800 meter guys, and Alec will have to work harder on mid-race pacing to take the kick out of speedier runners.

In the second heat, Kendall Cox ran a solid race to establish a new PR of 2:09.  He was much more controlled early on than in his previous 800, hitting splits of 30 and 32 for a 62 second opener.  He relaxed a bit too much in the third 200 before coming home nicely in a sweet new PR.  Kendall's times are dropping each time out in this event, and he should contend for key 800 and 4 x 800 spots as the year goes on.

600 meter run - Zach Gates and Tim Johnson both ended up in the middle heat of the 600 so it was a bit of a challenge to grab big points.  Zach looked smooth early, taking the lead just past the 200.  He relaxed too much while on the lead, but unleashed a nice kick to run 1:32 and take the win.  Tim Johnson engaged in a spirited race in the last lap after shadowing Gates, and I was proud of the fight he showed in the last 50 to take second in the heat.  Our two guys both scored points as they placed 6th and 8th.

1600 meter run - Ryan McGough is going to run a great 1600 meter race this season, and I thought his effort in this one was a step in the right direction.  Ryan hasn't run that many 1600 meter races in his career, and his 4:39.7 was good for a four second lifetime best and placed him fifth overall I believe.  A 62 second opening pace really played havoc with his race, but I was proud of his fight and of his regrouping for a hard finish. 

I doubled Tim Meincke back in this race after his stellar anchor leg in the F/S 4 x 800, and I expected a solid effort.  He did just that.  I could tell that his earlier race left him flat, but Tim ran 4:44 to finish off a solid 2:05-4:44 night.  Both he and Ryan nipped at the heels of the front pack for much of the race, but neither had the great legs to make a push for the win in this one.  It was a great learning experience for both.

March 25, 2010 - Updates on Recent Distance Action

MSL Jim Nagel Invite - Bollman's Twin 800s Highlight Solid Night

As a full team we have a lot of work to do.  We placed 9th out of 11 teams with only 32 1/3 points and will need to be much more competitive and together as a team.  I hope that our weak showing as a group will serve as a wake-up call.  With so many guys hurt and others coming back from other sports we still have a lot of room to improve.

4 x 800 meter relay - I wasn't sure if we would send a relay team to the IPTT meet even if we qualified, but I wanted us to run under the 8:17.0 standard anyway.  I put our fastest four in here as well, and I was also hoping to pull off the win.  Neither Prospect nor Hersey ran their best four, but we ran a solid race to take the win in 8:12.  Ryan McGough led off in a ton of traffic as they ran one heat of 11 teams on the four lane Lewis track.  He split 2:05, but spent most of his time getting jostled and thrown around.  No one ran particularly well for any team on leadoff, and we quickly got in the thick of things with a nice PR leg from Chano Bernardo.  His 2:04.2 split brought us to the lead, and sophomore Tim Meincke had the responsibility of running a huge PR and keeping the lead.  Hersey and Prospect zoomed past us, but Tim stayed composed and dropped 3.5 seconds from his PR to finish in 2:07.3.  Here is where the real action started.  Alec hit the 200 in 27.7 but was under control and he came through the 400 in 57.3.  From there he stayed in rhythm, reeling in Hersey's anchor leg with 80 meters to go.  His scorching 1:56.2 split was a career best and showed that his speed is really starting to come around. 

3200 meter run - We had a great opportunity to improve times and compete in this one, but it just didn't happen.  Neither Anthony Gregorio nor Ryan Wojdyla had a good race, and both guys ended up out of the places and nowhere near their season bests.  Back to the drawing board.

800 meter run - Zach Gates had been sick much of the week, but he came back after one day of practice and set a new PR of 2:08.3 in the slower of the two sections.  He placed second in the race.  In the faster section Alec ran one of his better races ever to finish second in 1:59.4.  He was the only guy in the field doubling back from the 3200 relay, and I was incredibly impressed with his poise and competitiveness on 25 minutes of rest.  He couldn't quite hang with a fresh Angelos Karkalis, but Alec did well to fend off a couple of late charges from Prospect's Albert Ciolek.