Varsity highlights
Weather: 52, sunny, breezy, soft ground
We made it! Pioneer qualified for
the 2000 state meet by placing 2nd of 14 teams at Division 1 Region
Meet #4 at Willow Metropark. As it turned out, Pioneer qualified
rather easily, finishing 50 points ahead of #3 Dearborn (which also
qualified for the state meet) and 80 points ahead of #4 Ann Arbor
Huron (which missed out). We did lose to Bedford once again,
but at least we earned another shot at them in the state
finals.
The top 3 runners ran superbly, with all three placing in the
top ten. Matt Johnson led the way with a 6th place finish (16:50).
Coming right after Matt were Eric Ford-Holevinski (8th, 16:52) and
Andy Harvey (9th, 16:57). An awesome performance by all three
runners. The 4th place finisher was Joe Anderson who took
21st place (17:34). Robby Young rounded out the scoring
with 30th place (17:46). It was very gratifying to see co-captain
Robby run a strong regional after experiencing many frustrations with
his running career over the past three years. Way to go Robby.
And, of course, we don't want to forget Nick Piotrowski. Nick
was just one second behind Robby. It was an excellent performance
by the entire varsity team.
So it's off to the state finals next Saturday. The state finals will
be held at the Michigan International Speedway, south of Jackson. For
the spectators, this is a horrible place for a cross country championship
because there's only a few places to get close to the action. For the
runners it's a decent course which is fast and flat. The only
problem for the runners is that they mostly run by themselves, without
any cheering from the fans. But, hey, who's complaining? At least
we're going to the big dance this year. It should be great.
Junior varsity highlights
The JV runners were allowed to choose between running on Friday
in Jackson or running the JV race at the regional. Roughly half
of the team ran in each meet. Josh Salvner did things a little
differently. He ran both meets, the only runner tough
enough (or foolish enough) to do this. Tip of the hat to Josh.
At Jackson, the top finisher was Harvey Acheson in 4th place, with
a PR time of 19:00. Harvey made a strong move to win the race but
finally faded at the end. Kota Takahashi, Sam Milgrom and Stephen
Sepaniak all finished in the top 15. Dan Moyer returned from injury
after missing all of the meets since Brother Rice. Dan ran a PR
time of 21:56.
At Willow Metropark, the JV runners were led by Soren Berg who
ran a PR time of 18:19. Close behind were Mike Roth (18:28)
and Matt MacVey (18:36, PR). Nick Wilkensen, Parry Garff and
Chad Schoch also ran personal record times.
Alan Antonuk, who has battled injuries all season, was finally
able to run a race. Alan ran a fine time of 19:08. Three
cheers for Alan.