2015 Alumni Race

On Friday evening, DGS Cross Country held it's annual alumni race for the 6th straight year. As always it was a fun event and great opportunity to bring back some old faces to race against this year's crop of DGS athletes. The current team prevailed 28-33 despite a strong presence up front from the Alums. For the first time in 6 years, an Alum won the overall race with ISU bound Ethan Kirk taking the top honors. Seconds back was Carthage sophomore David Fish who came close to being the first repeat Alumni Race winner. Alan Zhou and Joey Eterno were the top finishers for DGS placing 3rd and 4th followed by 2010 grad Spencer Zidarich. Austin Rutkowski, Luke LaLonde, and Chris Lippi were next to round out the top 5 for DGS, while Eric Bernard (2010) and Steve Zahrobsky (2010) were the 4-5 for the Alumni team.

Neither side was at full strength as a number of alums who are currently running in college, as well as a few of the likely varsity runners for this years DGS squad had various commitments or minor injuries that prevented their participation.

It was clear early on that the alums had a stronger sense of their current level of fitness as the DGS guys went out hard (too hard) and paid for it as the race progressed. David Fish, in fact, went out very conservatively and worked his way up all the way to 2nd. The eventual winner, Ethan Kirk was with the leaders early, but quite content to let them handle the pacing/leading duties until around the half-way point.

After this year's race, the Alumni team has lost it's 4th straight and is only 1-5 overall. Next year could certainly change that with quite possibly as many as 10 former Mustangs all preparing for their college CC seasons.

As mentioned above, Ethan was the first Alum to win the race in the 6 years it has been contested.  Here is a look at the past winners:

2010: Jeff Lester ('11)

2011: Nick Kirk ('12)

2012: David Fish ('14)

2013: Jacob Amiri ('14) - meet record

2014: Jack LaLonde ('16)

2015: Ethan Kirk ('15)