Deerfield Opener
DEERFIELD KICKS OFF 2020 WITH WINS OVER #29 WARREN AND ZION-BENTON
The Deerfield Opener isn’t usually a battle of ranked teams, but in 2020 nothing has been usual. #26 Deerfield faced one of their tougher opponents of the season in #29 Warren right off the bat.
In 2019, Warren beat Deerfield for a Regional Championship, and Deerfield’s 2020 squad was searching for revenge. Warren has two very good runners, and senior Josh Puyear ran on their shoulder for the first two miles. In the third mile, Warren’s Luke Wiley pulled away for good while Puyear took over second place from Warren’s Griffin Pasha with a half mile to go. It was a valiant move, but ultimately it did not hold. Puyear finished in third place in 15:31. Behind the front three, it was all Deerfield. Juniors Ryan Bernstein, Eric Lakemaker, Cole Bernstein, and Lucas Moskovitz finished within 9 seconds of each other, all solidly below 16 minutes, in fourth through seventh to round out the scoring for Deerfield with 25 points. Then seniors Jonah Kaplan and AJ Osborn pushed a few top five runners from Warren back three places to add to the margin of victory. Zion-Benton finished in third.
This was a big quality win for a Deerfield squad that is primed to be the best in the school has seen in many years but most likely got robbed of their chance to qualify for the State Championships by the pandemic. In a season like this, wins over quality opponents go far.
In the JV race, Deerfield showed that they have incredible depth once again. The star of this race, and perhaps the best performance of the entire meet was junior David Fisher who won the \ race and lowered his PR from 19:38 all the way to 17:03.
In the frosh/soph race, sophomore Brandon Barber led wire to wire for a huge victory a few seconds under the 17:00 barrier. This was actually Barber’s first cross country race, although he has been putting in the work since the last cross country season ended. In this race, Deerfield got a taste of what looks like another very impressive freshmen class led by Jon Wool and Dylan Cohen in the mid 17s, Dane Brown in 18:28, Ryan Jones in 19:04, and Dawid Turos in 19:27.
The final race of the day was the Open two mile race where three first-year runners led the charge. Freshmen Asher Siegel and Max Luke and junior Carter Levinson finished 1-2-3 in the mid 12s.
Not only did Deerfield win on all levels, but twenty-two new runners crossed their first high school finish lines, which is a special moment. With their first races under their belts, now the work begins to make the next races even better.
