Leyden Meet Recap

Saturday was a great day for DGS Cross Country. The team walked away from the Leyden Invite with victories in both the varsity and open races, while placing a close 2^nd in the sophomore race. On top of the team accomplishments, DGS had the individual champion in all three races on the day and overall just raced extremely well.

 

In the Sophomore race, George Willer pulled away with around 1km to go for the five second win overLeyden’s number one runner (who was the conference champ in both the 800 and 1600 just months ago in track). Following George were five other Mustangs that finished in the top 20 including Brock Royle (7^th), John Norris (12^th), John Heneghan (14^th), Colin Dunn (15^th), and Canyon Stage (19^th). The Sophomore team fell just 5 points shy of Morton for the win. The boys are very much looking forward to a rematch on October 15^th as we aim to win Conference on all 4 levels.

 

The second race of the day was the varsity race. The Mustangs quickly asserted themselves getting into good position early in the race. Around the halfway mark, Stephen Pipilas began to pull away from teammate Akhil Ghosh for the win. The course was actually around 5085m therefore was longer than even a typical 5k, which, combined with the slow nature of the course due to turns and footing made for some deceivingly slow times. Stephen actually ran a full ten seconds faster than last year’s winner even with the additional 80+ meters of distance which is a good sign going forward. Akhil held on to 2^nd and was following by 3 other Mustangs that all placed in the top 7 to secure an easy win with 21 points. Sophomores Nick Dziedzic, Eddie Siuda, and James Weigel placed 5^th-7^th overall. On top of just winning the varsity invitational, the week was a good sign for DGS in conference as we bested Hinsdale South on Monday at KLM and followed it up by defeating every other team in our conference at the Leyden Invite.

 

The last race of the day was an exciting one as again DGS quickly got into good position with a number of Mustangs up front. Ryan Gage, after fading back a bit mid-race, put in a good move to catch the leader with around 800 to go and held on for the individual victory in the open race. Including Ryan, DGS had 8 runners in the top 10 overall. Jimmy Slowik was 3^rd, Grant Connolly 4^th, Jack Hudec 6^th, Sayuj Shah 7^th, Sam Kirk 8^th, Matt Peloso 9^th, and Jeremy Canfield 10^th.