IHSA Regionals
DEERFIELD FALLS SHORT IN ALL-TIME DIFFICULT REGIONAL, PUYEAR ADVANCES AS INDIVIDUAL
It was one of the toughest days in recent DFDC history as the team competed at IHSA Regionals and fell short of a Sectional birth.
Deerfield had only failed to advance from Regionals to Sectionals once in the last two decades, so Sectionals has become somewhat of an expectation. But in 2020, the Regional assignments drawn by the IHSA were unbalanced, and Deerfield was placed in the Loyola Regional, which might be the most stacked Regional in IHSA history. With of 12 regionals across the state, this single Regional had six of the Top 25 teams, according to MileSplit Illinois’ rankings. And due to Covid, they decreased the number of Sectional qualifiers from the top six teams at each Regional to the top five. So one ranked team was going home in the first round no matter what.
Unfortunately for Deerfield, they were the ranked team that had an off day and ended their team season.
In the more Covid-friendly flighted format, the 5-6-7 runners ran first. In this race, Deerfield looked pretty strong. Junior Lucas Moskovitz had a strong race finishing in fifth place in his flight in 16:29, which ultimately placed him 28th overall and second for Deerfield despite running in the slowest flight. Seniors Charlie Hart and Ben Zamler ran good races too finishing in 38th and 41st place overall.
In the next two flights, Deerfield struggled while the other ranked teams excelled. Cole Bernstein and Ryan Bernstein were unable to maintain a fast early pace in their flight. Josh Puyear and Eric Lakemaker took the opposite approach by starting slowly but were unable to make up as much ground as they hoped. Puyear did run his way up to 17th place, which was good enough to qualify for Sectionals as an individual, but he was still not happy with that result. He hopes to top that performance at Sectionals.
While it is true that it was far from Deerfield’s best day, and it was a disappointing result, it is impossible to label this a failure. For one, it is clear that this team is the best Deerfield has had in decades. Even though Deerfield usually advances out of Regionals with relative ease, this Regional was so much more difficult than usual that no Deerfield team from the last few decades could have advanced. The mere fact that getting sixth place behind five ranked 3A teams, and ahead of a historical powerhouse Palatine, left disappointment in the Deerfield runners shows that Deerfield cross country has been taken to new heights.
Next week Josh Puyear takes on the Hoffman Estates Sectional. While there is no State Championships to compete at this year, he still has the opportunity to finish in a would-be qualifying spot by being one of the first ten finishers not on a qualifying team.
