Saturday, October 31st - IHSA Sectional The day started off strong with Abby Petersen running a PR of 18:46 and outplacing herself by 10 places. She took 12th overall in the meet keeping the team score low. Charlotte and Yuliya ran in tandem (no really – we have pictures to prove it) right up until the last ¼ mile where Charlotte had a little bit more left and passed two girls while Yuliya passed one. Both of them either outseeded themselves or maintained their placement. Victoria and Elena led the 3rd wave with an impressive 12th and 13th place finish in their heat allowing for them to place 49th and 52nd overall respectively. Victoria outseeded her predicted placement by 15 seeds. Abby, Charlotte and Victoria all made large gains in their seeds and Yuliya and Elena held their positions to allow the girls team to tie for 7th place – advancing to the State Final Meet as a team for the second year in a row.
Our other two Varsity athletes, though non-scoring had a large impact in this as both of them finished in front of a 5th place runner from Fenwick. Had it not been for their strong performances in their heat (Natalie placing 67th and Olivia 74th overall, outseeding their places by 5 and 15 respectively) and their continued competitive nature driving all of our 1-5 runners to be faster year long, we would not have made it as far as we did this year. Coach Wilson and I are so incredibly proud of this team and what they have accomplished this season. We cannot wait to see what this young group of girls does next year and in the track season!
Saturday, October 24th - IHSA Regional WOW!!! What an amazing weekend of racing! For those who weren’t able to come this past Saturday, we were seeded to take 7th (according to athletic.net), I had us realistically placed at 5th based off of conversion times and our girls raced SOOOO well that we took 3rd overall!
Abby, Victoria, Elena and Natalie all matched their predicted seed places (according to my conversion chart) and special shout out to Charlotte and Yuliya who were seeded at 27th and 34th respectively, but placed 19th and 17th overall in the meet dropping our team score SIGNIFICANTLY. I will say this over and over again – it takes a WHOLE team to win races and advance and this group of girls truly works together to get there. Olivia Rogers ran within 20 seconds of her PR (converted for slow course) despite having rolled her ankle within the first mile of the meet. Everyone on our team does their job and they all take turns having their “good days” which is why our team works so well.
Saturday, October 17th - WSC Conference Meet It takes a team of support to get as far as we have in the last two years and this team continues to build off of one another. Watching these girls pack up and race, take over for each other when another athlete is struggling and just COMPETE is so much FUN. They truly do feed off of one another and push each other in ways that a coach could only dream of. I haven’t watched the Live Twitter feed from DGS but I hope that those at home had the opportunity to see just how strong this group of girls is and how much depth we truly have this year. I will caution that when you read these times, you should know that this course is SLOOOOOOW and long, so pay closer attention to where our ladies ended up in the race against the competition as this tells a bigger picture. EVERY ONE of our top five athletes finished before ANY 3rd runner on Leyden, Willowbrook, Morton, Proviso East and Addison Trail’s teams. That’s impressive!
Abby Petersen: 4th overall, All-Conference (20:10) Yuliya Drabchuk: 11th overall, All-Conference (21:20) Charlotte Old: 14th overall/13th scoring All-Conference (21:35) Elena Garcia: 18th overall/16th scoring All-Conference (22:15) Victoria Cius: 20th overall/18th scoring (22:25) Natalie Fernandez-Cin: 23rd overall/20th scoring (22:52) Olivia Rogers: 30th overall/27th scoring (23:30) Ava Berg: 40th overall (23:47) (This was only 7 seconds off of her season PR… which means she ran GREAT on Saturday!!!) Maggie Chen: 40th overall (24:23) Tian Schulte: 50th overall (24:28)
A couple of moments I was incredibly proud of – a.)Natalie’s extended sprint near the finish which got her close to catching a DGS girl, but generally kept her time low. b.)Elena’s mental strength as she entered her 3rd mile, she was not positioned where she would have liked and rather than shutting down, she responded to the coaches’ request and pushed herself back in the race to maintain in our top four athletes AND keep an All-Conference spot. c.)Victoria’s team support as they finished the second mile – she spoke to Elena during the race and I think it helped both of them to mentally stay in it. d.)Abby’s incredible 4th place finish – she hung well with the top athletes in our conference and is certainly ready for this regional meet. e.)Ava Berg’s FANTASTIC time – we need to find out what Wheaties she ate and make sure everyone has them for Regionals because she is the ONLY one who raced a converted PR despite the wind!! f.)Yuliya and Charlotte’s tag team racing – they work so well together to beat other competitors and lift one another up.
JV Meet Highlights Of the 8 athletes who participated in our JV Time Trial Verse Addison Trail – SIX had season PR’s!
Caroline Munkhdelger: 1st with a time of 23:03 (32 second PR) Noelle Arflack:2nd with a time of 23:12 (30 second PR) Grace Koziol: 3rd with a time of 24:11 (5 second PR) Madison Arflack: 4th with a time of 25:36 (53 second PR) Abigail Lu: 5th with a time of 25:56 (1:50 second PR!!!) Zoe Funk: 8th with a time of 26:42 (1:14 second PR!!!) Elif Kose: 10th with a time of 27:10 Aly Motherway: 15th with a time of 32:11
Nice work ladies! Way to take home one final W!!
Monday, October 12th - vs. Downers Grove South As this meet is during the week of Conference, the Varsity girls were instructed to do a fartlek workout during the meet rather than truly expend all of their energy. This is no easy feat for them as many of them would rather just race and have a very hard time holding themselves back when someone is beating them. As a coach, it is hard to watch – BUT, they ALL executed the workout perfectly gaining what I hope will give the last bit of endurance and speed mixture they need prior to the Conference meet.
As for JV, this was their last true opportunity to race against another team. Some of our athletes have struggled with nagging injuries for the last couple of weeks and that certainly affected them. However, four of our 10 athletes competing had season PR’s and competed well above expectations. Caroline Munkhdelger placed 5th overall with a lifetime PR for 3 miles of 23:35. Noelle Arflack and Grace Koziol, both new to running this season finished 9th and 10th . Lizzie Tabachikov ran a season PR of 25:19 by almost a minute! Madison Arflack stepped up to take the 5th and final scoring position on our team by racing a 30 second PR. While the girls lost the race, they truly did compete well. It is tough going up against a 3A school who is coming off a season having placed 3rd in state – but these athletes never seem to let their competition get to them. Instead they rise to the challenge and do the best they can in that moment.
We are looking forward to our Virtual JV Conference as well as the Varsity level Conference!
Monday, October 5th - vs. Morton Going into the Morton meet, we thought the race was going to be much closer and the girls were prepared to battle for their win. Last year, Morton easily beat our team and we did not forget it, so this year the girls came in mentally prepared and ready for the challenge!
On the Varsity level, The end result was a win 18 – 41 with Abby Petersen and Elena Garcia comfortably taking 1st and 2nd. Freshman, Charlotte Old, moved her way up in the line-up to be our number 3 runner and placed 4th overall in the meet. She was closely followed by freshman Yuliya Drabchuck placing 5th. Junior Victoria Cius stepped it up tremendously as she placed 6th while racing a huge season PR resulting in a lifetime PR of 19:31 (the first time she ever broke 20 minutes on KLM’s course!).
We did not win on the JV level, but we had 12 season PR’s over the course of both races. Other noteable performances include freshman Tian Schulte who raced a converted 3 mile time of 23 minutes (dropping over a minute off her previous best time to do so) and Senior Madison Arflack who dropped a minute off her time as well to run under a 9 minute mile pace average for three miles.
It was a beautiful day for a race and certainly enjoyable to coach.
Tuesday, September 29th - vs. Hinsdale Central Our meet against Hinsdale Central was very exciting and certainly our most race this season. Hinsdale Central is a 3A school that traditionally makes it to state every year, typically placing in the top 10. Last year, they took home a 3rd place trophy in the State Series which goes to show how competitive their program is. That being said, our girls rose to the competition placing 3rd (Abby Petersen), 6th (Elena Garcia), 10th (Charlotte Old) and 11th (Yuliya Drabchuk) against them in an inner squad meet at the Varsity level.
As a whole, we had 16 of our 20 athletes earn course PR’s (as well as season PR’s) racing an average of 30 seconds faster per athlete. Rather than sitting back and letting the competition get the best of our girls – they truly rose to the occasion and raced incredibly well! As coaches, we enjoy watching our athletes have an opportunity to race against teams that will push our girls to be better and watching our athletes rise to the challenge rather than fold under the pressure. It truly was a great day of racing all around!
Most notable performances go to: Sophomore Ava Berg – who dropped about 95 seconds off her time to run just over 23 minutes for 3 miles and earn herself the #9 spot on our Varsity squad. Sophomore Noelle Arflack – who dropped about 60 seconds off her time to run just over 24 minutes for 3 miles – also earning herself the #10 spot on Varsity. Junior Victoria Cius – who ran a LIFETIME PR on our home course by breaking 20 minutes!!!! And finally Freshman Abigail Lu who ran almost 2 and half minutes faster than her previous best time finishing in under 26 minutes!
Monday, September 21st - vs. Proviso East I will be honest in saying that knowing Proviso East may not have a team to race against, our training plan last week did not prepare our girls to “race” this meet, rather to use this meet as a component to our training plan. They ended up only having one girl finish the race so we won by a forfeit. With that in mind, it is always amazing to me when we see the competitive drive of our girls come out and still run PR’s in a situation where they are a.) not set up to “race” and b.) do not have any competition except for their own team.
Rather than throwing in the towel - we had a total of 8 course personal records by the following athletes: Charlotte Old, Victoria Cius, Ava Berg, Olivia Dire, Grace Koziol, Tian Schulte, Abigail Lu and Aly Motherway with 7 of these athletes having new season bests!
Most notable performances include: Grace Koziol and Tian Schulte who dropped their times by approximately 40 seconds. Victoria Cius who dropped her time 30 seconds to move up to the #5 spot on our team. And last but certainly not least, Olivia Dire who dropped her time by A MINUTE and is now 1 second away from the 10th spot on our team which would put her on the Varsity line up.
Keep up the great work ladies!
Monday, September 14th - vs. Willowbrook Willowbrook’s meet was certainly an exciting one, I hope the live stream gave you a feel for the action! In the first half mile, two Willowbrook girls took an early lead and their number three runner wasn’t far behind Elena (our number two). Abby and Elena, paced themselves well early in the meet and took control of the race after the first mile. Yuliya and Charlotte, who started off behind Willowbrook’s number 4 runner did the same and slowly worked their way up behind their number 2. Then we had a large group of our number 5 – 8 runners with Olivia Rogers, Victoria Cius, Maggie Chen, and Natalie Fernandez-Cin all grouping up together early in the race which allowed them to all get Personal Records that were roughly between 40 seconds to 1:20!!! (*Note- our course is 2.8 miles long so I did a rough conversion based off the pace they were running to their 3 mile time to account for these PR’s).
Varsity Results For those who don’t know – if you take 1st , 2nd, 3rd in a dual meet you automatically win the race as there is no mathematical way for the other team to beat you. Going into the final finish loop we had 1st and 2nd secured and Yuliya was in 5th place. She passed the 4th place runner before making the turn into the loop and had an INCREDIBLE sprint to the finish to pass the 3rd place runner within 10 feet of the finish line. It was AWESOME to watch and even better to know we automatically won the meet! Of course, our team has so much depth this year that our number 4 (Charlotte), 5 (Natalie), 6 (Victoria), and 7 (Maggie) runners weren’t far behind finishing in 6th, 7th, 9th and 10th respectively. Our final score on the Varsity level was 19 – 41.
JV Results Since we ran one collective race, it was really hard to tell what was happening at the JV level until the finish. We also treated the race like an official Varsity level race meaning only the top 7 runners were on Varsity. So Olivia Rogers, who finished 11th in the race overall and CERTAINLY was running with the Varsity squad, took 1st place on the JV level followed by Noelle Arflack (4th) Ava Berg (5th), Caroline Munkhdelger (6th ), and Grace Koziol (8th). Ultimately, we won the meet with a score of 24 – 33.
This means we are currently undefeated on both the Varsity and JV levels!!! Way to go girls!!
Other Highlights from the Meet Aly Motherway had a side stitch within the first half mile but finished the race thanks to teammate Abby Lu who ran with her the whole time and supported her to keep running. Lizzie Tabachnikov ran OVER a 2 minute PR which means she ran about 40 seconds faster per mile – that’s IMPRESSIVE! Maggie Chen rolled her ankle but finished the race anyway with a 1:20 PR to place in our top 7. We are hoping for a speedy recovery!
Thursday, September 10th - vs. Addison Trail Coach Wilson and I could not be more proud of these girls and how much they are growing in one season. I’m fully aware that we started the season with minimal pre-season work, but so did everyone else. On Thursday evening, we again won both the Varsity and JV levels with what we call an “automatic win” on the JV level taking 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. Almost EVERY single one of our athletes ran a personal season best despite the rain and muddy conditions!
On the Varsity level we took 2nd (Abby Petersen), 3rd (Elena Garcia), 5th (Yuliya Drabchuk), 6th (Charlotte Old), and 7th (Natalie Fernandez-Cin) to win 23 – 38.
On the JV level we took 1st (Ava Berg), 2nd (Noelle Arflack), 3rd (Olivia Dire), 5th (Tian Schulte), and 6th (Noelle Hayes) winning 17 to 44.
To highlight a few outstanding performances, I’d like to start with our freshman athlete, Aly Motherway, who ran her second 3 mile race ever and dropped her time by over 6 minutes!! Our second highlighted performance belongs to Sophomore, Ava Berg, who was pushed into the JV race this week but refused to let that hold her back. She won the race with a time of 24:40 – over two minutes faster than last week’s race and a minute off of her first time trial pace. This earned her back a spot on the Varsity squad for this Monday’s meet. Last but certainly not least, I want to recognize Juniors, Victoria Cius and Olivia Rogers, who had a rough start to the season but both significantly dropped their times by approximately 2.5 minutes in Thursday’s meet to run 23:40 and 23:26 respectively.
In addition – on Saturday we had MANY girls push themselves to run farther than suggested on their long run including: Noelle Arflack (6 miles), Lizzie Tabachnikov (6 miles), Zoe Funk (5 miles), Natalie Fernandez-Cin (6 miles), and Maggie Chen (5 miles).
The dedication is there and we just keep working together to improve each week. We are about half way through the season and already accomplishing great things ladies – let’s keep up the good work!
Thursday, September 3rd - vs. Leyden For those of you who were on the team last year, you know that we had incredibly close races with Morton, Willowbrook and Leyden – specifically losing to Leyden by one point in our dual meet. While they may have had a few seniors graduate, I could not have been more impressed with our athletes’ performances. Abby, and Elena took the lead right away and had absolutely no competition the entire race – running respectable times of 20:37 and 20:47. Yuliya and Charlotte both started off conservatively allowing some Leyden runners to be in front of them at first, but by the mile for Yuliya and by the 2 mile for Charlotte, they both were well ahead of all the Leyden girls giving us a clean sweep of places 1 – 4!!! Our 5th Varsity runner – Natalie, came in less than a minute behind this group at a time of 24:19 placing 8th overall.
After an impressive Varsity race, our JV girls stepped it up and brought the same level of intensity to the table. Maggie Chen – new to our team this week – was only told to race 2 miles. At the two mile mark she was first in the race and willingly dug deep enough to race that last mile so as to maintain a first place finish with a Varsity level time of 24:51. Senior Caroline Munkhdelger finished shortly behind Maggie, ALSO earning a Varsity level spot in next Tuesday’s meet with a time of 25:47. Then our JV girls followed that incredible start up by finishing 4th, 5th, 7th , 9th and 10th leaving little to no room for the Leyden girls to race against us.
Honestly, we just took over both levels and acted like there wasn’t any competition on the field for us – I can’t wait to see how we do against Willowbrook next week!
On the bus ride home, I acknowledged the following three incredible performances: Sophomore Maggie Chen – having never run with us before and this being her first week of practice taking 1st place in the JV level when she could have very easily dropped out at the 2 mile. Freshman Aly Motherway – racing her first full 3 miles in just over 36 minutes (you’ll notice on the time trial sheet she’s been working hard to get all the way up to 3) at a pace that is very similar to her 2 mile pace. Senior Caroline Munkhelger – running a time very similar to that of last year’s season end times and breaking her way onto the Varsity level for the first time in her running career!