Lake County Invite 2022
DEERFIELD SURPRISES WITH THIRD PLACE FINISH AT COUNTY WITHOUT TOP RUNNERS AND WINS THE OPEN RACE
On a hot and muggy Wednesday afternoon, 17 schools from around Lake County battled for county supremacy. The conditions were not for the faint of heart, and the course at Waukegan Sports Park boasts rough terrain and rolling hills. It was not a day for fast times. It was a day for toughness to win out.
With two meets this week, Deerfield rested key runners on Wednesday to prioritize Saturday’s race. The top four finishers at last week’s Deerfield Opener did not race, so the team was expected to finish somewhere in the middle of the pack, but they surprised.
Deerfield had nobody up front, but 30 or 40 people back was a nice pack of four Warriors. Drew Spiegel led the charge with Ryan Jones, Eric Hogenkamp, and Nick Dowell on his back. They pushed each other through the switchbacks of the prairie path and moved up slowly, but the next Deerfield pack, which would need to provide the fifth runner, was far back. In the final mile Deerfield’s front pack started to break apart, and with 400 meters to go, Jones was leading it. He finished in 24th place with Spiegel close behind in 27th. Then Dowell, running his first varsity race, placed 30th, and Hogenkamp 32nd. This was a very solid top four finish and primed the Warriors for a great team result if a fifth runner could come through. Jeremy Lamm emerged from the second pack with a great final mile to move up into 48th place and close out the scoring for Deerfield.
Deerfield had an impressive five runners in the top 50 but nobody up near the front. It was clear that 3A powerhouse Barrington and 2A state favorite Grayslake Central finished first and second, but behind them it was too difficult to tell how the rest of the team scores shook out. When the final results were calculated, it was Deerfield in a surprising third place. That is a spectacular performance by a team that sat out their four fastest runners. It shows a lot of depth. This Deerfield group even topped conference foe Vernon Hills, who did run all their best runners, by eight points.
On the topic of depth, Deerfield dominated the Open race. Freshman Jamie Chandler got out conservatively but found himself on the back of the race leader by the middle of the race. In the final mile, Chandler made an aggressive move and never looked back. He finished in first place in 18:36. Not too far behind him was an impressive string of Deerfield runners: Danny Kriegel in third, Scott Harvey and fourth, and Ethan Schott in fifth. Zach Bolon finished the scoring for Deerfield in 21st.
Deerfield won the Open race with 34 points over Libertyville in second with 59 and Grayslake Central with 77. The Warriors have won the Open race three of the last four years, which is a testament to a strong culture where it’s not just the talented runners who work hard. It’s more difficult to stay consistently motivated when the spotlight isn’t on you, but Deerfield, despite being significantly smaller than many Lake County teams, somehow builds consistent depth that other teams can’t match.
Now the Warriors move on to Saturday where they will run their full squad at the extremely high-caliber Hinsdale Hornet/Red Devil Invitational against a bevy of the best cross country teams in Illinois.
