Ryan Clevenger and Jake Hoffert duel in the Minooka Flight Championship race (Andy Derks photo)
First, I have to start this blog with one of the most interesting and unique stories I’ve ever heard of happening at a cross country meet. In fact, I’d find it very hard to believe that this has ever happened at a cross country meet. During the open race at the Minooka Flight Invitational, I overheard one of the coaches telling another coach that an athlete had a collision during his race. I was thinking to myself, 'well the course was a little muddy and it gets pretty tight in places so that didn’t seem that far out of the ordinary.' Then the coach further explained to the other coach that the athlete hadn’t simply collided with another athlete, he instead had taken a deer head on! Remarkably, the athlete not only took the deer head on but he kept racing and finished the race! Come to find out, the deer fighter, as he’s become known on Twitter, is Billy Wright from Conant. Billy if you read this, my hat is off to you, I don’t think I could take a deer head on and finish my race, you’re one tough kid! And now, you have one heck of a story!
The Minooka Flight Invitational was a very exciting meet and not just because of the deer. The meet is run differently than most and instead of one big race, the #7 runners go head to head, the #6 runners go head to head, etc making it 7 races instead of just one race for the varsity level. One race is hard enough to put on but a total of 11 races, 2 open races, 2 fresh soph races and 7 flight races; it takes one very organized crew. Coaches [Kevin] Gummerson and [Nick] Lundin did a great job organizing and running the meet as it went flawlessly. I understand that in 41 years, this was the largest Minooka Flight Invitational, that’s pretty impressive! The meet certainly lived up to the hype with big names like Yorkville senior Jake Hoffert and Downers Grove North senior Ryan Clevenger going head to head in the unique format. It was great to compete alongside programs like Neuqua Valley and Yorkville, as a first year high school cross country coach, I very much so look up to their programs.
Joe Newton Championship Field/East End Park: Home of the York Dukes cross country team (Dr. Brian Damhoff photo)
The format of the meet is such that if you don’t cover moves, you can quickly end up in no man’s land so I view it as mentally, the toughest race environment that we’ve faced this year. Our varsity boys didn’t fare as well as we had envisioned coming into the meet. Too many of them ended up in no man’s land and the results showed that. Plainfield North junior Jack Sebok ran our best leg taking home 4th in the first flight. He was able to mix it up with 4:18 miler junior Connor Horn of Neuqua Valley and Jack gave him a pretty good battle before settling for 4th. On the fresh-soph level, we came in with the expectation that we should be able to compete for the win as we placed our top fresh-soph guys in the race. And, with a 1-5 split of 34 seconds we took home first place as a team. Our 4 and 5 man did a great job of moving up the last mile and closing the door. I think as a team we left this meet knowing that although we’ve made huge strides this season, we still have a long ways to go as a team.
On Friday night before the meet, we had a team pasta party that one of our parents graciously hosted. The parents in our program are fantastic as they go above and beyond and we appreciate it so much as a coaching staff. Our team watched The Long Green Line a must see documentary about York’s cross country program. On Monday, we brought our entire team to the historic East End Park to compete in the York Fresh-Soph Invitational. It was certainly a tremendous experience to see the park and also to get to compete in it and I know our kids felt very privileged to run there. Our upperclassmen did a run before the race and some of them went by the high school where they were amazed to see the legend himself Joe Newton doing what he loves, coaching. I’m really glad we were able to bring our kids to this meet as it was our first time attending in school history. We are buckling down for championship season at Plainfield North as it is fast approaching, we’ll keep putting in the work and the miles and see where it leads us!