Conference Champs!

Saturday was a historic day for the DGS Cross Country program. For the first time in the last 9 years (and possibly school history), DGS completed the sweep winning the conference championship on all levels. The previous year, DGS was victorious on the Freshman level, but placed 2^nd in the 3 other races.

At the outset of the season, the team set as one of our goals to win conference on all levels. For that accomplishment to happen on Saturday, it took a whole team effort and we couldn’t slip up in any of the races.

 The first race of the day featured our freshmen boys squad that has been extremely successful throughout the year. They placed 2^nd at LT to start the season, then 2^nd at Turtlehead Lake, and won all other freshmen specific races on the year. With that going in, we were confident that if we executed the race plan we’d come out on top. Fortunately, our performance went above and beyond our expectations with almost every guy running a personal best to finish the season. The race was exciting from the start with a couple Mustangs immediately getting into position to race for the win. Hinsdale South put two freshmen in front of our first just two weeks before with one running 17:12 that evening. We thought both Jimmy Weigel and Nick Dziedzic were capable of running that type of time and racing for the win, but it would take a big PR. As the race played out, there were 4 runners bunched together with a mile to go. Watching Nick and Jimmy work together up front was a thing of beauty as they raced patiently early in the race, then moved when it was most opportune. With about 800 meters to go Dziedzic put in a big move and continued to press his advantage all along the northern stretch of O’Brien Park, opening up a bit of a gap on the next 3. He was able to hold on with a strong finish and win in a 59 second personal best of 16:54! Weigel battled with the two other runners and ultimately finished third with a 17:06, also a nice PR. After that duo up front, we believed it was our depth that would win the race for us and it did. DGS had 7 runners in before any other team’s 5^th, including 6 all-conference performers. George Willer broke 18 minutes for the first time running 17:51 to place 8^th. Mitch Ludewig was 11^th in a lifetime best of 18:14. Ben Laurich was the 5^th man for the Mustangs in 13^th. Not far behind were the duo of Brock Royle and Colin Dunn in 16^th and 17^th, both with personal bests. While he did not figure in the scoring, a great race and huge PR was turned in by Matthew Peloso who dropped almost two minutes off his personal best to run 22:10.

 Despite the season-long success of the freshman team, it was actually the sophomore race that we were most confident about going into the meet. The sophomore boys scored just 25 points in winning, placing five individuals in the top 10. Also, for the second race of the day, DGS had the individual winner. Akhil Ghosh broke away from the field by the mile mark and really never looked back. He ran most of the race solo to a personal best time of 16:39. Making this accomplishment all the more impressive is the fact that although a sophomore, Akhil is only in his first year of CC. Placing 2^nd and the only guy really within any reach of Akhil throughout the race was Luke LaLonde. LaLonde broke 17 minutes for the first time in running 16:51. Marc Alvarez was the next Mustang in 5^th and not far behind was Ryan Gage in 7^th with a personal best of 17:32. Rylan Dreyer rounded out the scoring for DGS in 10^th place. Another race of note was turned in by Jack Hudec who ran a very tough race to run under 20 minutes for the first time.

 The most anticipated race of the day was the varsity showdown between 2A #4 Hinsdale South and 3A #22 DGS. While we matched up with Hinsdale only two weeks before, the coaches thought our varsity would be better served getting an extra easy day after Lockport and doing a tough workout that Tuesday instead of racing. Hinsdale sent a message that day that they would be a tough team to beat. We knew it would take an effort from our entire top 7 to beat them as they have possibly the best 1-2 runners in the state. As expected the race went out hard. Jack LaLonde gave chase to the duo from HS and hung tough with them for about half the race until fading back slightly (or looking at the splits, them pulling ahead). He finished expectedly in 3^rd, but ran possibly his best race with a finishing time of 15:06. A big race was turned in by sophomore Stephen Pipilas to place 4^th in a PR of 15:19. Hinsdale’s 3^rd runner ran a great race to place 5^th, followed closely by Joey Eterno in 6^th. Through 3 runners, they were beating us 9-13 so we had to make up those spots on runners 4 & 5. We managed exactly that as our 4-6 runners placed 8^th, 10^th, and 11^th, all finished before Hinsdale’s 4^th runner. That was enough to give us the narrow victory 31-34. Also, for the first time, DGS put all seven runners in the top 16, garnering all-conference honors. Those individuals included Jack, Pip, Joey, Max O’Meara, Alan Zhou, Austin Rutkowski, and Eddie Siuda (first DGS all-conference freshman in 9 years).

 The last race of the day was the boys JV race. As I explained to the guys before the race, this is the one that shows we are the best overall team, not just best 7 guys, but this shows how hard we’ve worked this year #1-45.

The team did not disappoint, winning the JV title by the biggest margin of any of our wins that day. Chris Lippi led the way running a PR of 16:31 for 2^nd place. As I told Chris after the race, he was really the champ in my mind as the only athlete to beat him was actually the #1 runner for Leyden. Following closely behind Chris were Zach Scheffel and Zack Wascher who finished 3-4, both running under 17 minutes. Jimmy Slowik was 6^th in 17:21 and Stan Smid ran his best race of the year to place 8^th as our #5 runner. Jeremy Canfield ran his best race of the season to place 12^th for all-conference honors.

 Overall it was a tremendous day for DGS filled with a plethora of PRs and victories on all levels. Our roster now decreases to 12 with 7 guys able to compete each step of the way in the IHSA state series. The team will race at Hammel Woods in Shorewood at 12:30 this Saturday. The Conference Championship meet was a perfect way to start the state series with some very positive momentum.