Lake County Invite
"NEXT UP" DEERFIELD RUNNERS PLACE SIXTH AT LAKE COUNTY INVITE AND FIRST IN THE OPEN RACE
Fifteen teams from around Lake County competed at the Lake County Invite at Waukegan SportsPark. With five top runners resting and another one rehabbing an injury, Deerfield put its depth on display.
Given that their “next up” lineup of runners were expected to really be the team’s sixth through thirteenth runners going against other varsity teams, the Warriors did not expect to see any of their runners until the middle of the pack passed. But that was not the case. Dylan Cohen, mixed it up with top runners from top teams and finished in ninth place overall. Another outstanding result for the sophomore after his win at the Deerfield Opener last week.
Out of the 15 Lake County teams at the meet, most of which raced their full varsity lineups, Deerfield took sixth place. Dane Brown had an excellent race to place 30th. Jack Gordon, Carson Amstutz, and Drew Spiegel rounded out the scoring.
There was a lot of confidence to be drawn from this team result as it pertains to Deerfield’s 2A competition. Deerfield managed to beat #30 Lakes and hang much closer to #22 Vernon Hills and #4 Grayslake Central than expected with this lineup. When Deerfield’s top runners return, Deerfield could make a lot of noise.
The rest of the runners ran in the Open race, which was hectic in the beginning because of the scores of runners in the race, but as the dust cleared, Deerfield uniforms started populating the front. In the second mile, sophomore Edwin Shi dared to move into the lead. He put a small gap on the Zion-Benton runner in second place, but the Zion-Benton runner unleashed a ferocious kick in the final 200 meters to catch back up Shi. It looked like he would overtake Shi with 50 meters to go. But Shi had one extra gear to hold off the charge by four tenths of a second and take the individual victory. After those two runners, Deerfield junior Nadav Basa had the best race of his career to take third overall. Ryan Jones and Jeremy Lamm followed in seventh and eighth, and then Eric Hogenkamp was the final scorer for the Warriors in 17th. This impressive team performance earned Deerfield the win an astounding 36 points over second place Libertyville (62 points), third place Lakes (105 points), followed by ten other teams.
Next for the Warriors is the Hornet/Red Devil Invite in Hinsdale on Saturday where the entire team will run in one of Illinois’ best invites of the year. And it will be the long-awaited debut of Deerfield’s top varsity runners.
