In His Own Words: Scott Milling

Hey everybody, I’m glad to be doing another blog after a 2 week hiatus. Hopefully, this one will make up for the long break.

After the Palatine Invite, we went back to work for another grueling two weeks. These two weeks every year are like the season’s purgatory. After Palatine, everybody is pumped for another invite and instead we all just have to pay our dues to another two weeks of hard training until we can meet the State Series. Thankfully, we have two dual meets to break up the standardization of training. 

The first came at Lyons Township against LT and Hinsdale Central. After a performance at Palatine that we were not all too happy with, we wanted to make a statement.  The race went perfectly to plan and we had our top four (myself, Mimlitz, May, and Mattes) all come into the chute together and just about 15 seconds later our fifth man Jack Libert just edged out an LT runner for fifth and we got a perfect score. This was an awesome feeling and just motivated all of us to get right back to work.

The next week we had a dual meet against Glenbard West. When we left York it was a very nice day out, but within a 20 minute drive to neighboring Glen Ellyn, all hell had broken loose.  The varsity race started amidst the rain and the winds and we just started running as a pack. Suddenly, the lighting sirens went off, but nobody was going to stop running, so we finished the next two miles as a pack finishing seven guys strong through the chute.  As we left one of our coaches said, “Now, we are ready if there is bad weather at State!”  Well, I guess that phrase would have been fitting for any future race this year…

We all woke up Saturday morning pumped to run at the Conference Meet and hoping Mother Nature wouldn’t stop the meet from happening. When we arrived at Schiller Woods, the weather was cloudy, but it looked like the storms were going to hold off. The freshmen and sophomore races went off and the weather stayed great. Also, a huge congrats to the York sophomores on a huge upset win at Conference…I don’t know how you guys did it but it was awesome!  As we started to warm up, the rains started coming and coming and before we knew it we were a part of a monsoon. Standing anxiously at the line, we were ready for the gun to go off so we could finally start running. The first mile went out conservatively at 5:00 with nobody really wanting to lead due to the conditions. A little after the mile myself and Chris May took the lead and began setting the pace. At about the 1.75 mile mark, with the weather just eating everybody up it, it burped out myself and Zach Smith of DGN. At the two mile, we were 10:05 and I knew it would be down to a one mile battle.  For the first 1100 meters I led trying to put in a surge after surge but he hung right on for all of them. Then, going up the hill with about 400 meters to go he went to the front.  From here on out we both battled back and forth until I was able to pull away with about 100 meters to go.  It was an awesome race and he is a great runner. The best part came after I finished when I saw my teammates come through the chute 3-6 to round us out a 19 point score victory.

Also, it was awesome seeing my teammates who I have ran with since freshman year leave everything they had for the last time wearing that York singlet.  For us seniors, we will never forget our conference meet and man is it a great memory or what!  We are looking forward to the IHSA Regional this Saturday. Thanks for reading everybody and I hope ya’ll come back for next week’s blog.

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