In His Own Words: Scott Milling

Hello, my name is Scott Milling and I am a senior at York High School. First, I would like to thank Mr. Grasley and MileSplit Illinois for asking me to write a blog for their site. Each week, I will try to write a blog just talking about that week’s meet and how the team is doing on a whole (right now I’ve moved it over writing an essay on an Emily Dickinson poem, really just a no brainer). Well, let’s just get started…

This past week, we had two meets: a dual against Oak Park River Forest and the Richard Spring Invitational (PND).

Driving to Schiller Woods (the home course of OPRF), the sky looked very ominous and it looked like there was a good chance that storms were just waiting to hit. Thankfully it just stayed cloudy and the rain didn’t come home till right when the meet was over. This is another example of how our team believes Mr. Newton can control the weather. There have been multiple days when the usually reliant weather.com has forecasted, “90%-100% chance of thunderstorms from 2:00-6:00 for Elmhurst” on days when we have very hard and important practices, but when the time comes the storms stay away until during the cool down or right when you get home as if Mr. Newton is able to just halt the weather so we can have practice. So, back to the meet, on the varsity level we ran a very controlled race in the beginning and just kept picking it up throughout the race  and working together as a pack. In the end, we went 1-10 and had about a two second split on five. It was a nice way to start the season, but even more important is that it gave us a chance to get more experience on OPRF’s course because they are the hosts for the WSC Conference Meet. After the meet, there was a real conflict as whether to start packing for PND or watch the Bears game. Well, basically after the first quarter the Bears really dissolved that conflict.

“Not another dang blue shell!” This following phrase was yelled through our tiny activity bus probably about 50 times on the trip down to Peoria on Friday afternoon as about eight guys were all connected on the DS’ playing Mario Kart the whole way down. I don’t know if it was the Mario Kart or Mr. Hedman’s driving, but that drive seemed like the shortest drive ever down to Peoria. Friday was fun running and explaining the course with some freshmen and sophomores who had either never been or ran at Detweiller before and just watching how excited they were to run in such a huge race. I think everyone would agree that your first time at Detweiller is a pretty eye opening.  Firday night was very chill and everyone was just super pumped to finally race.

Come Saturday morning, everyone was focused and ready to run. As the race went off, our goal was to have seven guys all together at the mile which we did perfectly and from then on out the goal was just to keep passing.  Kyle Mattes, Alex Mimlitz, and Chris May all came in together at around 14:45 and went 6, 7, 8.  All three had awesome performances and ran huge PR’s. Also, for Alex is was redemption for over two years of injury and I was just so happy for him. I ended up finishing 33rd with a 15:12 and then Matt Plowman, a stud of a sophomore finished 40th to round out our top five. Zach Herrera and Jack Libert both had pretty solid races, and will just keep on improving from here on out. As for me, I had a pretty bad day at the office and I just have to refocus and am excited for another big test this weekend at Palatine.  But, in the end all that matters is that we won as a team, and that was a great test. We know though that PND is NOT State and that it is just a great stepping stone in the direction we want to be headed. 

Lastly, I would just like to congratulate Garret Lee on his individual victory. Also, Kyle Mattes would probably kill me if I didn’t tell you all he was the self-proclaimed “King of Mario Kart.” This upcoming week we have a tri meet against Downers Grove North and Proviso West and then the Palatine Invite. Hope all of you come back next week for my next blog.

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