CSL North Boys Championships
DEERFIELD WINS ECOND STRAIGHT CSL NORTH CHAMPIONSHIP! SWEEPS ALL FOUR LEVELS, SIX RUNNERS NAMED ALL-CONFERENCE
Two in a row! On Saturday, the Deerfield Warriors won their second straight CSL North Championship. After a title drought going back to 2008, Deerfield has now won the varsity race at the CSL North Championship meet three years in a row, the last two of which clinched conference championships! And the lower levels were absolutely dominant! It was a great day for the DFDC.
Cross country has had a very different vibe this season with Covid shutting down all major meets and forcing teams to re-create their schedules from scratch with small Covid-friendly competitions. The conference championships was no different. Originally supposed to be hosted by Niles West, the CSL Championship meet got divided into four different sites, splitting each division and each gender. Deerfield hosted the CSL North boys championship, which was the sixth meet Deerfield hosted this season.
Deerfield entered the meet as heavy favorites. After the dual meet portion of the schedule, Deerfield was 5-0, but they knew the other teams wouldn’t let them win easily.
In the varsity race, senior Josh Puyear immediately went into the lead ahead of Jason Polydoris of Highland Park. After a while, Puyear fell off pace and Polydoris took the lead gapped Puyear. Struggling from the fast early pace, Puyear also got passed by Nate Wehner, Highland Park’s second runner. Hoping for an individual conference title, Puyear was disappointed with his third place finish. But looking back at Puyear’s four conference meets, it’s hard not to be impressed with his four conference finishes: 17th, 5th, 4th, and 3rd. And while a 1-2 finish for Highland Park was not something Deerfield liked to see, Puyear’s teammates backed him up to claim the championship team trophy.
Junior Ryan Bernstein ran a fantastic race finishing in 4th in an new PR of 15:28. His twin Cole Bernstein ran a solid race to finish 6th. Next for the Warriors was a fantastic race from senior Charlie Hart who finished 10th in a new PR of 15:53, his first time under 16 minutes. Hart finished 16th as a sophomore but missed his junior year because of injury, so this was quite a triumphant comeback for him. Finishing up the scoring for Deerfield was junior Lucas Moskovitz in a solid 15:54 for 12th. Sixth for the Warriors was Ben Zamler who ran a huge race barely dipping under 16 minutes for the first time in 15:59 for 14th place. The first six Deerfield runners earned All-Conference honors for finishing in the top 14. This the first All-Conference honor for Hart, the second time for Ryan Bernstein, Moskovitz, and Zamler, and the third time for Puyear and Cole Bernstein. This was only the third time at least six Deerfield runners earned All-Conference in a single year since such records have been kept, the other two years being 2006 and last year 2019. Junior Eric Lakemaker was the seventh member of the championship squad in 17th place.
While the varsity team championship is the primary goal of this meet, Deerfield’s list achievements on Saturday is long. The lower levels completely dominated, taking the top three spots in every single race, and winning the maximum number of ribbons possible.
Deerfield dominated the junior varsity race winning with only 17 points behind a 1-2-3 finish. Senior AJ Osborn won the individual JV championship with a strong race finishing in 16:18. Senior Asher Kriegel, a runner who ran over 27-minutes three years ago and had already took ten minutes off that, ran an incredible race knocking 36 more seconds off his PR in 16:34 for second place. Third place was David Fisher in a new PR of 16:38. All seven JV runners won top 14 ribbons, the others being Joe Healy in 5th, Evan Morris in 6th, Jonah Satyr in 8th, and Zack Greco in 11th. These JV runners a special group. They are on a whole different level than other JV teams. It’s obvious when you observe each team’s actions and attitudes at the starting line of JV races that a lot of teams are giggling and just trying to have fun, while this group is focused on the task at hand like a varsity team would be. And it shows in the results.
The sophomore race was equally impressive with Deerfield taking the victory with just 16 points. This was a group that fought really hard to win a freshman championship by just seven points last year, and then lost the 2nd, 4th, 7th, 10th, and 11th finishers from that race because they did not rejoin the team for their sophomore year. Beyond that, their 3rd and 5th finishers in that race also did not compete this year because of injury. However, the guys that were left, plus a few newcomers, really pulled it together this year. Despite having nobody in the top four in as freshmen last year, Deerfield dominated with a 1-2-3 finish. Lucas Goldenberg won the individual sophomore championship in 16:51, newcomer Brandon Barber followed in second, and much improved Drew Spiegel took 3rd after finishing 16th in the freshman race last year. Kyle Jensen ran a big PR of 18:08 for fifth, and Jack Pinsky ran an enormous PR of 18:36 for seventh to round out the scoring for Deerfield. Jeremy Lamm and Ethan Schott finished 10th and 11th in massive PRs of 18:51 and 18:53. All seven runners won top 14 ribbons. It was a stellar day for the Deerfield sophomores.
And the Deerfield freshmen got to show off their two months of hard work too. Like the JV and sophomore teams, the freshmen also finished 1-2-3. Jon Wool won the individual freshman title, and Dawid Turos finished in second. Dylan Cohen and Dane Brown battled through knee and foot pains and very minimal running over the prior few weeks to deliver third and fifth place. All seven Warriors once again collected top 14 ribbons. Ryan Jones finished 8th, Nathan Wolski finished 9th, and Edwin Shi finished 12th.
And the action didn’t stop there. Since Covid capped the number of runners in each race, there were two extra races this year. In the Open 3-mile, Deerfield absolutely dominated taking the first 10 spots. Junior Ethan Blacher led the charge, winning in 17:27 with Brent Meilman and Jack Gordon not far behind in 17:30 each. In a normal season with unlimited entries at the lower levels, these athletes would be eligible to win top 14 ribbons instead of being in an Open race. Blacher’s time was fast enough that it would have earned him a 12th place ribbon if run in the JV race. Further down, sophomore Adam Fenster ran 19:06, which would have earned him the 14th place ribbon in the sophomore race. In the Open 2-mile race, Deerfield freshmen took first through sixth place led by Asher Siegel and Aiden Cheris. Similarly, their times would have earned them the 12th place ribbon and 14th place ribbon respectively in the freshmen race. The only thing preventing these runners from earning ribbons was the perfect storm of having such a strong team during the year Covid limited race sizes.
All in all, Deerfield earned the CSL North championship trophy and all three lower level titles. They earned six out of a possible seven All-Conference honors They won 21 out of the 42 ribbons, which is the maximum in this format. In the normal format, Deerfield would have collected 25 out of the 42 ribbons, which is 60%. Remember that there are six teams in this conference, so the fact that one team collected 50% of the ribbons, and would have collected 60% of the ribbons in a normal situation, is remarkable. There were 31 PRs on the day too. As the final whole-team meet of the season, Deerfield always approaches Conference with the mindset of “maximizing Deerfield success,” and by all accounts, they did.
That concludes an outstanding season for most of the runners. And now all eyes turn to Varsity as they begin the Covid-modified IHSA State Series, beginning with the brutally difficult Loyola Regional on Saturday.
