Varsity highlights
This was not a very good showing for the Varsity in its last SEC
Jamboree, and was perhaps even more disappointing as a tune-up for
next weekend's all-important Regional meet at Fuller Field. None of
the seven runners ran a PR, and the team finished a distant third at
an SEC meet for the third time this year.
As usual, Morty Stensones-Fornaess paced the Pioneers, but this time
by nearly a minute as he finished fifth overall with a strong 16:26,
just two seconds off the PR he ran at Portage. Kevin Goehring and
Soren Berg finished close together in 15th and 16th place at 17:16
and 17:23, respectively, and Dan Moyer (20th, 18:01) and Sathish
Mohan (21st, 18:07) came in as another pair to finish out the
scoring. Takashi Gould, attempting to recover from an injury that
has kept him out for weeks, was 21st with a time of 18:12 and Kyle
Kulseth ran an uncharacteristically slower time of 18:13.
Morty, Kevin, and Soren have clearly separated themselves from the
rest of the pack all year. (Jeff Hubbard, who was pulled out of
today's race just before it began due to an injury, and Klye Kulseth,
who had been running consistently until this race, could also be
included in this group). But the first eight runners (including both
the Varsity and JV races) who finished behind Morty, Kevin, and Soren
this week were separated by a total of a mere 15 seconds. Coach
Sleeman will likely be taking a long, hard look at who is running
best during this last week of practice before he fills out the
remainder of his Varsity lineup card for the Regional meet.
Junior varsity highlights
The JV runners continued to show strong improvement in this race,
with five of the top seven finishers running PR times. Leading the
way was junior Carl Duke, who got out of the gate quickly and ran
with determination throughout as he led all other Pioneers from start
to finish with a 20 second PR of 18:01. Senior Nick Wilkinson
finished just a second behind him in second, Walker Rutter-Bowman
finished third with an impressive PR of 18:06 after missing the last
three races due to injury, and Sam Milgrom managed only to tie last
week's PR time of 18:16 as he finished fourth. Completing the
scoring for Pioneer was freshman Lang Burkhardt, who not only
bettered his previous PR by a whopping 47 seconds but also burst past
classmates Mark Antonuk and Eric Anderson in the now heated race for
Fastest Freshman.
Other notable performances included Andrew Lyjak's 6th place finish
among Pioneers with an 18:46 PR and J.P. Decker's 20:05 PR, which is
better than his previous best time by a full minute.