Lakes Sunset Invite 2023
WHEN TEMPS DROP, TIMES DROP: DEERFIELD RUNNERS SOAR AT LAKES SUNSET
After grinding in the summer heat for months, cross country runners love when fall weather finally hits. And on Saturday they celebrated it by running very fast at Lakes.
The Lakes Sunset Invite was created during the pandemic as a method of holding cross country races with fewer runners, and it was so successful that it stuck. This year’s format included two flights of five runners each—one flight for each team’s top five runners, and another flight for their next five, plus an Open race to kick off the afternoon. With Conference in just one week, Deerfield held many of their best runners out, but the team still shined.
The first race of the day was the open “Bronze” flight, and Jay Noren had himself a career day. He let the rest of the race get out fast and stayed back with a Deerfield pack in fifth place for the first mile. From there, Noren kept moving up until he took the lead around the 1.5-mile mark. With fear in his eyes having never been in this position before, Noren worked to pull away from the field. A runner from Lakes slowly reeled him in, but Noren was able to hold him off by less than a second for his first career race win and a 48-second PR as well. Behind Noren, the Warriors put their entire top five in the top ten. Logan Luo ran a big PR to finish fourth in 17:35. Jon Weissmuller, Edwin Shi, and Sam Rush were fifth, sixth, and seventh, respectively. Behind those guys was a slew of ten consecutive PRs led by Aurin Dasgupta running 18:12 and including Cooper Baum, Lucas Bryan, and Sammy Kogan who absolutely destroyed their PRs. In the team scores, Deerfield dominated the Bronze flight with just 25 points.
After the exciting Bronze flight was two varsity scoring flights. First, in the Silver flight, Sam Chaban started way back around 20th place and worked his way up one-by-one. By the last mile he caught every runner in the race besides the leader who was far ahead. He battled with a runner from Woodstock for second place and ultimately lost to him by one second. However, it was a great race for Sam moving all the way up to third and running a big PR of 16:30. Hugo Albrecht-Buehler ran a PR of 16:52 for 12th place, which was a great bounce back at a crucial point of the season after a few tough races recently. Andrew Calderon, who broke the 18-minute barrier in his last three-mile race, jumped all the way past the 17-minute barrier with a 16:53 for 14th place. Next, Zach Bolon ran like a senior with his team on his back for a 23-second PR of 17:07. Charlie Marks battled a cramp but rounded out the scoring in 18:15. Deerfield placed second in the Sliver flight, which was an incredible display of team depth given that this group would have been in the Bronze flight if Deerfield hadn’t held out their top runners intentionally.
The final race of the day was the Gold flight, which included Deerfield’s B-team against other schools’ A-teams, but Ben Freedman proved he belonged. Freedman ran a 27-second PR of 16:03 for 22nd place. Freedman has shown tremendous improvement all season long, but this performance was next-level. After Freedman was Danny Kriegel in a PR of 16:31 and then Matt Solovy in 16:32. Ryan Jones dropped another 45 seconds after returning from injury last week, and Nick Dowell was the fifth warrior through the chute in 17:13.
This was the final test for these runners before they lace up their shoes for Conference where they’ll be taking on the large schools of the CSL South for the first time.
