Deerfield Earns Trophy at Pat Savage

On a beautiful sunny Saturday, the members of DFDG went to Niles West High School to compete in the Pat Savage Invitational.  The legendary Coach Savage was present to watch his namesake invite and he got to witness an impressive display by the youth of Deerfield.

This meet features a fr/so race, so we took the opportunity to race our youngster against others their own age.  This race provided proof of what we already knew:  we have a very good group of young runners.  Of the 33 teams competing, the Warriors finished second, placing behind only the powerhouse Prospect program.  Medals were handed out to the top 10 finishers and freshmen Maddie and Azalea each snagged one of those, taking 5th and 8th place respectively.  Both of these girls ran a smart and patient race with their last mile being their fastest.  Just missing out on medals but helping the team score were Olivia and Audrey, coming in 11th and 12th.  Stella used an aggressive start and tough finish to hang onto 16th place and finish our scoring at just 42 points.  The next three team totals were 75, 130, and 200, so it was a great visual of red and gray charging to the chute early.  Freshmen Haylie, Meimei, and Riley all earned PR's for this race.

Keeping our fr/so runners at their own level, left just 5 runners for the Varsity race.  Not phased by the pressure of literally every runner counting, this group was able to secure 17th place out of 43 teams.  Maya and Mira paired well together and stayed within a few seconds of each other throughout the race.  They ended up with our top 2 times on the day, Maya at 20:32 and Mira 20:33.  The scoring rounded out with Brooke and Jessica just 2 seconds apart and then Isabelle coming home to establish a team score.