Niles West Pat Savage Invite 2023
PACK RUNNING PROPELS DEERFIELD TO VICTORY AT PAT SAVAGE INVITE! SOPHOMORES 2ND, FRESHMEN 3RD.
After struggling at the first few invites of the season, Deerfield is now beginning to hit its stride with a victory at the Grant “JT” Invite last week and now a victory at the Niles West Pat Savage Invitational.
The Pat Savage Invitational is known for having tons of teams and major traffic on the course, so it’s imperative to get out fast. Deerfield did that well. Their top five runners went towards the front right away so they were clear of the traffic. Jamie Chandler, Dylan Cohen and Jon Wool were in one pack and came through the mile in 5:01. Dane Brown and Eric Hogenkamp were together a few seconds back at 5:06. Deerfield had a clear lead at that point with all five of those runners in the top 20 overall. After the fast start, the million dollar question was whether they could hold it together for the next two miles and take the win. Fast starts make the finish much more challenging, but they were motivated with their teammates by their sides. In the second mile, Wool fell off Chandler and Cohen, but he was scooped right up by Brown and Hogenkamp. They kept themselves close to Chandler and Cohen, and ultimately all five runners finished within 13 seconds of each other. It was clear that the pack running was a psychological benefit to all five of them and prevented them from blowing up after the fast start. Deerfield won the 3A division by 29 points over New Trier, but since all classes run together, the toughest competition came from 2A opponent St. Ignatious who finished in second behind Deerfield in the combined results, though Deerfield’s win was still decisive.
Further behind the top five were some additional promising results. Despite the warm day and damp course that did not lend itself to many of PRs, Ben Freedman’s time of 16:30.34 was a PR by a few tenths of a second. Also, Ryan Jones made his season debut since returning from an injury and ran an impressive 17:27. As he gets more miles under his belt, he may factor into some important meets down the stretch.
The first place varsity trophy was not the only hardware that rode home on Deerfield’s bus. The sophomores earned a hard-fought second-place trophy. Scott Harvey led the way for the Warriors with a very impressive 16:30 for third place. Will Lambert and Sam Chaban also recorded top ten finishes with Charlie Marks in 11th. To close out the scoring, Jay Noren had a career day running a PR of 18:00. It was clear that Noren could see the clock closing in on the 18-minute barrier as he sprinted to the finish with all his might. Though he did not get it this time, the 18-second PR was very impressive. Also, Reed Galasinski finished much higher than expected with a 22-second PR of 18:28 and 35th place. The Warriors got second place by only two points to what essentially amounted to Buffalo Grove’s varsity team. Buffalo Grove’s varsity team happens to be all sophomores, and they decided to run them down on the sophomore level instead of in the varsity race.
In the freshmen race, Deerfield took third place behind Oswego East and Maine South. Andrew Calderon led the way with a seventh place finish. PRs came from Ethan Reich, Jasper Fine, Zachary Berman, and Mayer Peters.
The competition at Niles West was a bit tougher than the competition at Grant, and Deerfield’s performance rose with the competition. That trend must continue for Deerfield to have success at Conference and the IHSA State Series in a few weeks because the competition there will be even steeper.
