Lake Park Invite 2023
FREEDMAN LEADS THE WAY FOR DEERFIELD AT LAKE PARK INVITE
On Saturday, the Warriors travelled to Roselle, IL to compete in the Lake Park Harvey Braus Invitational. The course comprises two or three laps of the athletic fields at the Lake Park high school campus, and ends with an exhilarating 300 meter long track finish. It’s a fast course, and with cool temperatures in the 60s on Saturday, it was an opportunity for great times.
With the top-7 varsity and frosh/soph squads competing at a different meet in Peoria, there were plenty of opportunities for new faces to cross the finish line in scoring position. But it was a tough task given that Deerfield’s B-teams were up against other school’s A-teams.
In the varsity race, Ben Freedman had a breakout day. He got out faster than usual and was able to hold on strong. He ran a 23-second PR of 16:30 for 38th place. Danny Kriegel had a harder time holding onto the fast pace and finished in 17:22 as Deerfield’s #2. Zach Bolon had his best race of the season so far in 17:30 and was Deerfield’s third finisher. Further back in the race, two freshmen had major impact for the Warriors. Andrew Calderon and Logan Luo were scoring varsity runners finishing in the team’s #4 and #5 spots. They worked together throughout the entire race with a conservative start and closed with a monster final mile to finish in just over 18-minutes. Deerfield finished in 16th place as a team, which is very impressive given how many of their top runners were at a different meet.
Earlier in the morning, Zach Lieberman had a big day in the JV race. He ran very tough and finished with a time of 20:43, which was a PR by over a minute.
The frosh/soph race was particularly exciting for Deerfield. It was this group’s first two-mile race since their season opener, so they got to show off how much they’ve improved in the last few weeks. All 17 Deerfield runners in the frosh/soph race set new PRs. Alex McManamna, Eli Duncan, Ethan Reich, Edward Minev, Reed Galasinski, and Cooper Baum ran in a tight pack through the first mile. Their team racing style made them look like much more mature runners than their age would imply. Further back in the race, the biggest PR came from MJ Wilson who has been quietly grinding since day one. He lowered his two-mile best from 16:50 to 14:26. The frosh/soph group finished in 11th of 19 teams, which is incredibly impressive given that the ten best freshman and sophomore runners were either at another meet or in the varsity race. Deerfield’s frosh/soph squad is deep and improving rapidly.
