IHSA Regionals
DEERFIELD ADVANCES TO SECTIONALS WITH RUNNER-UP FINISH AT LAKE FOREST 3A REGIONAL
On Saturday, the DFDC traveled to Lake Forest West Campus for the Lake Forest 3A Regional, the opening round in the IHSA State Series. The IHSA State Series consists of three rounds culminating in the IHSA State Championships. In this first round, ten teams compete at Regionals for six spots at Sectionals next week.
The IHSA placed Deerfield in Class 3A for the next two years, which is the class for the largest schools in Illinois. Deerfield is the second smallest out of the 140 3A schools across the state, but you wouldn’t know it from watching them compete
Deerfield’s runners got out fast. If the course distance is accurate, then all seven Deerfield runners ran their first mile in under five minutes. The top ten or so runners in the Regional formed a large pack at the front, but running behind them was senior Ben Kraemer, junior Josh Puyear, and sophomore Cole Bernstein together in a nice pack of three. For a large portion of the race, those three were pretty isolated and worked together to get each runner closer to the finish line. Many of the other teams had one or two stud runners up front, which Deerfield could not match, but Deerfield’s pack running gave them three finishers in the top 15 to make up for lost points.
Not so far back, sophomore Ryan Bernstein moved up nicely in the middle of the race to finish 21st, and sophomore Eric Lakemaker finished 22nd. Bernstein and Lakemaker were ahead of almost every other team’s 4th and 5th runners which catapulted Deerfield towards the top of the final results.
Additionally, junior Jonah Kaplan had his best race of his season as Deerfield’s sixth runner. Kaplan was filling in for a top seven runner who had a family conflict and the first alternate who got sick. But he certainly didn’t run like a backup’s backup. He finished in 35th place in 16:15. Junior Ben Zamler finished behind him in 40th.
In the end, Warren, a school with nearly three times as many students as Deerfield, took the Regional title with 71 points. Deerfield finished in second with 83, just ahead of Libertyville’s 89 and Stevenson’s 91. Although Deerfield had their eyes on a Regional championship, they were happy to safely accomplish their primary goal of advancing to Sectionals. And this was still Deerfield’s second-highest finish at a 3A Regional in decades after the 2010 team that won.
The six qualifying teams from the Lake Forest Regional will compete at the Hoffman Estates Sectional on Saturday along with the qualifying teams from the Palatine and Prospect Regionals. The Sectional will be held at Busse Woods, and the top five teams and next seven individuals will qualify for the IHSA State Championships. Deerfield hasn’t qualified for the State Championships in 3A since 1982.
