WSC Gold Conference Meet - Saturday, October 18th Conference was quite a day! We thought we would be getting poured on, but it turned out to be not as bad as we imagined. The course conditions weren't the best with excess rain from the week creating a muddy, slow course with hills and tight turns. We fully anticipated times to be slower than PR's and just asked girls to focus on racing - which they most certainly did!
Accolades Abbey and Emma - had actual season personal bests! I can't express enough how difficult it was to run a PR on Saturday and their PR's on a fast course would probably both be close to around 2 minutes increases!
Anna Wilcox - earned All-Conference and her picture on the wall by placing 12th (a one place improvement from last year) in the Varsity level.
Varsity - as a team came EXTREMELY close to 3rd place - only 5 and 4 points behind Morton (3rd) and Leyden (2nd).
While we didn't place where we hoped, we know all of our athletes gave their best effort and we are so proud of what they accomplished this season!
Richard Spring Peoria Notre Dame Invite - Saturday, September 20th EVERY ATHLETE on our team that raced had a minimum of a 30 second PR on Saturday. I believe in 16 years of coaching, that is the first time I've had everyone PR on the same day... truly incredible!
Furthermore, many of these personal records were LIFETIME records, meaning these girls are racing the fastest they've ever raced at our midpoint in the season!!! It makes for some exciting prospects when considering the post season :)
A few specific performances to note this week:
Yelena Haidamaka - had a bit of a change in race day plans, choosing to step up and run in the Varsity race instead of the Open race so that everyone could be done earlier and get to Homecoming. This can be incredibly intimidating for an athlete, but she took it in stride and chose to race alongside another athlete the entire 3 miles in the race - cheering each other on - until the very end where she realized she still had room to give so she sprinted into the finish. Yelena's big step up pushed her to a 2 MINUTE and 13 second PR coming close to her lifetime PR of 26:59 at last year's Conference Meet. We are only a little over halfway through the season, so she has about a month to work towards getting a lifetime PR this year and judging by her finish, she has a lot more room to give so we can't wait to see her use that energy even earlier in the race!
Emma Koehler - who has been a consistent Varsity athlete and has trained incredibly hard all summer has been racing really well this season. At Saturday's meet, she earned another LIFETIME PR of a whopping MINUTE and 9 seconds!!! She is officially our third Varsity athlete racing in the 20 minute mark, this creates an incredibly competitive line-up going into the post season and we still have a month to go.
Lucy Wang - who has also been running at the Varsity level had a breakthrough meet where she crushed 24 minutes for the first time this season by running another HUGE PR of a MINUTE and 28 seconds!! She is our fourth Varsity level athlete and is crucial to our post season results. Her time of 23:07 is a respectable time and with a month to go before the start of the post season, there is still time for further improvement.
Alyssa Pendon broke her own LIFETIME PR by 30 seconds. She has been racing Varsity times all season, so having PR's that are consistently better than last year's race times is truly impressive. Alyssa is our current #5 runner with a time of 24:13. This is, again, a respectable time but we are excited to see the growth that we know Alyssa, Lucy and Gianna all still have in them to round out our top 5 group!
Finally, we have yet another outstanding performance by....
Gianna Picardi who took home WeeBee (the girls' way of honoring the most impressive performance of the day) this week after she set her own season personal record for the third week in a row. She finished in 24:15 which is a LIFETIME PR of 2 minutes and 21 seconds!!!! This time pushes her up to a competitive Varsity time and will help to create a strong 4,5,6 pack on our Varsity team. We are so proud of her tenacity so far this season and are looking forward to continuing watching her grow. We are also incredibly excited about the dynamic that was created after Saturday's meet and cannot wait to see what comes next.
Hinsdale South Tri - Thursday, September 11th Last night was our first (and last) night racing at KLM this season! We celebrated seniors Anna Frankel, Audrey Koepfle, and Anna Wilcox who have all been in our program for the past 4 years. Each one of them have contributed amazing things to our team including but not limited to: team sleepover hosting, pasta parties, all conference titles, state qualifying titles, individual champions in races, organizing Six Flags team bonding and more. Coach Koehler and I are so grateful for our seniors and the type of teammates they are both on and off the team and are proud to say they all have very bright futures ahead of them!
At last night's meet, Anna and Audrey were able to take 1st and 2nd leading our girls to a win against Morton and Leyden by over 20 points. The team scores are as follows:
I don't know that I've ever had a team do so well at KLM so early in the season, especially not at a midweek meet that we really do not "gear up" for in any special way. These athletes continue to impress me each time they race and we are enjoying watching the gradual improvement they are making!
Katherine Legge is not an easy course to run due to the long, steep hills and last night's grass cut was a bit longer than it would have been for a weekend meet. However, all athletes handled the change in terrain immensely well.
Special shout outs go to: Gianna Picardi who ran a follow up PR from her almost 2 minute PR last weekend. Emma Koehler who ran her fastest KLM time in her career. and Daniela and Milica - who ran their first ever 3 mile race!!!!
Keep up the great work ladies!
Lyons Township Invite - September 6th
We had a great weekend at the LT Invite with almost every athlete running a one minute or more PR!
At the JV Level - special shoutouts go to: Linley who ran her first ever 3 mile race!!! Emma G and Yelena who ran their first races this season and crushed it. Gianna - who felt SO AMAZING after her MINUTE AND 49 second 3 mile PR that she wanted to shout it at the rooftop and get everyone to join Cross Country (let's be honest - it really does feel that good!!!)
On the Varsity level - Anna W, Emma K, and Tree all had 5K times to compare to which were all over 30 second PR's. Emma K had a MINUTE and 53 second PR!!!
We couldn't be happier with the way our athletes raced on Saturday and look forward to their progression this season. It is still very early on and each girl is working so hard, it's exciting to see their potential and know we have so much to bring to the table when we start tapering for the end of the season!
Leyden Quad Results - September, 2nd We competed at Leyden's new course in Centerpoint Preserve in Northlake. This will be our course for Conference so it was nice to get to expose ourselves to it.
While we asked our Varsity squad to treat the race as more of a workout for injury preservation purposes, we still performed very well! Audrey Koepfle, Anna Wilcox and Emma Koehler all placed top 10 at the Varsity level with 2nd, 4th and 7th places. We placed third as a team with Leyden scoring 42 points, Morton 46 and we scored 50 points. I know Leyden was also doing a workout, but I still am encouraged with the closeness in points and feel we have a good chance of remaining competitive at Conference. Let's keep working hard!
Also, a special shoutout to Abbey Baile who ran her FIRST RACE EVER, even while battling some sinus congestion. She ran a first mile split of 10:10 which is about 2 minutes faster than what she's been typically running! She followed that up with running most of the remaining three miles - we are so proud of her and excited to see how much she grows throughout the season.
Oregon Challenge Results - Saturday, August 30th Varsity raced in Wisconsin on Saturday and it was an exciting but challening course. There were steep inclines, trails with difficult terrain to traverse, and some incredible views (including a lake) for most of the race! I would define this course as a TRUE cross country course with the way it was laid out and I think the girls really enjoyed it.
We placed 3rd overall, with a team time that was only 30 seconds off the second place team. While we were disappointed to miss the team 2nd place plaque by such a small amount, we still came home with 5 medals including:
Sophomores: Lucy Wang - 9th place Juniors: Emma Koehler - 6th place Seniors: Anna Wilcox - 3rd place, Audrey Koepfle- 4th place, and Anna Frankel 8th place