Proviso West... A Humbling Experience

Yesterday, our team traveled to the always competitive Proviso West Invitational.  Prior to yesterday, we were undefeated at the varsity level on the season with wins at the Little Four Invite against very good DGN, Hinsdale Central and Oak Lawn.  We also came out on top at a triangular against both Whitney Young and Proviso East.  Just last weekend we were the surprising winners at the Greg Foster Invite, a 20 team meet hosted by Proviso East. 

For the 50th anniversary of Proviso West's invitational, PW Coach and Meet Director Johnny Jenkins decided to make a tough meet even tougher by inviting a handful of new schools (including powerhouse Cahokia), as well as a few stud "at-large" individuals (Kahmari Montgomery of Plainfield Central and Konrad Eiring of Barrington to name two).  The result was an extremely tough meet that made it pretty difficult for us to garner points.  Indicative of that fact was the ease with which I was able to keep track of our score throughout the meet.  We put up 3 points total (8 at the soph. level thanks to the double relay points).  Overall, it was not our best day as a team, but it by no means was our worst either.  Actually, we had many outstanding performances but unfortunately only two of those were strong enough to get something on the scoreboard.  We certainly did not enter the meet expecting victory, in fact, my pre-meet prediction that we would possibly only score in two events (if those guys ran great) came to fruition.  Congratulations certainly are in order for Nick Kersting who had a great meet placing 5th in the 55h running PRs in prelims and again in finals.  Both races were his first times under 8 seconds FAT, with his 7.90 in finals.  He capped off his day with a personal best in the 4x4 as well.  Our other point, came from Jack LaLonde who ran a lifetime best 9:46 in the 3200 to place 6th behind 3 CC All-State runners, a guy with a 4:09 full mile on his resume and a very talented senior runner from Naperville Central in Scott Hicks.  To squeak out that one point, Jack had to beat two top 50 guys from CC, one who was All-State.  That 1 point was well earned.

My hope is that our team took this as both a humbling and learning experience.  This is nothing to hang our heads about, instead rather it is something we can rally around and remind us each day that we need to push to our limit to achieve greatness.  Our team this year has a lot of great things going for it.  We have an extremely positive attitude, a group of guys that are "coachable" and fun to be around, and we are also very young.  My first year coaching, we had a pretty similar situation.  This was 2008 and I can still remember how many points we scored and how we got them.  That year, the meet was great as always and included some talented athletes including the NV guys Chris Derrick (kind of a big deal), Danny Pawola, and Jim Riddle.  As a first year coach I was in awe.  That meet saw Danny Block throw the shot and hit the wall and I vividly remember watching Aaron Beattie run the Soph 3200 in 9:38.  I also remember watching a lot of my guys place last or near to last with PRs... and was proud of how we competed and saw the potential for the future.  I recall being excited that Bobby Castillo crushed the 11 minute barrier running 10:47 (two years later he'd be our school's only 3200 All-Stater and holds school record of 9:17).  We scored 6 points that day all in the long jump.  Tyler Vlna placed 4th and sophomore Shane Molidor placed 5th.  Shane would win the state title in the long jump two years later.  Two years after scoring 6 points, we scored 100 (i think... a lot easier to remember the point total when it's 3 or 6) and won the meet.  We went on to win Sectionals against a loaded Lyons Twp team for our first title in school history. 

This year's team has some similarities to the 2008 squad, but even more important differences.  While I look forward to seeing how we do next year and the year after, this team doesn't just have the future to look forward to, we have the present.  We are a good team that if we continue to get better each day, can be great by season's end.  Other than the long jump, we are better than the '08 team in every event... most by a lot, and with guys that are predominantly underclassmen.  In '08 I had exactly 1 distance runner who broke 5 minutes indoors.  This year's team will have at least 3 and that is just counting the freshmen. 

As I mentioned before, the Proviso West 50th Invite was a humbling experience (not that we needed a humbling of that magnitude... we're a pretty humble squad to begin with).  I found myself immediately after races using what had just transpired as a "teachable" moment.  We'll learn from this weekend's meet, stick together, and stay hungry.  Great things to come for this team.  In 2015...