What an incredible night for our throws group and Coach Garbrecht. Without one of the state's top throwers (Mike Tarasiewicz), we placed 1-2 in the Shot Put and 3-4 in the Discus. Seniors Tommy Barrett and Johnny Fisler stepped up in a major way to secure critical TEAM points.

On the FS side, Freshman Judah Van Engen threw a bomb of 44-11 to win Conference and break the Freshman School Record! Additionally, Shawn Culich and Mike McDonough placed 1-2 in the FS Discus!

 Work hard - Expect to win

Austin Kulig finished out his SWSC career in style. The All-Conference basketball star won the High Jump and the Triple Jump, which makes a total of 4 SWSC gold medals in Austin's career. Three straight years as Conference Champ in the High Jump. Austin has lofty goals next week.

With injuries to key varsity athletes, we needed all hands on deck to go for the Conference title. That meant needing freshman Caden Wolfe to run varsity and run well. Caden answered the call. 1:59.93 in the 800 was good to place 3rd in the Red. This outstanding time also breaks our FS School Record, held by Matt Withrow, and ranks Caden #3 in the state among Freshmen. Caden is now part of TEN School Records.

In a 4x1 race where HF ran the third fastest time in state history, we managed to still execute great handoffs and win the SWSC Red with a time of 42.67. To follow this up, we ran 1:29.81 in the 4x2 to win the SWSC outright! This was all done without one of our top guys, Rey Alexander. Both times were under state qualifying. Outstanding job by Julian Littleton and sophomore Dionte Thigpen for stepping up in a big moment.

Going into this season, we knew that Lincoln-Way West was going to be a great team and extremely difficult to defeat in the SWSC Red. LWW dominated the FS Conference last year, winning 110-62, led by the state's top freshman sprinter. We knew it was going to be a dogfight.

Andrew was seeded to score 91 points in front of LWW's 85 points before the meet started. A 6 point difference is basically a toss-up. Game on.

To heighten tensions, the timing company had major issues throughout the meet, including no live results for the first half of the meet, the wrong points and places being assigned in some events, and the field events not being inputted until after the 4x4. We took solitude in the fact that we knew we were having a fantastic meet. Our mentality all night was to focus on our process and the results will speak for themselves. We had the best meet of our season. However, after a 45-minute post-meet delay to figure out the correct team scores, it was much closer than we expected. LWW also had a fantastic meet.

As LWW's head coach, Joey Strain, and I anxiously waited for the ineptitude of the timing company to end and the results to be finalized, we decided to complete the team scores by hand. Ultimately, the final team scores decided upon were:

Andrew 99

LWW 98

As a competitor, I would've expected my first reaction to be the jubilation of victory. However, all I could think about is how bad I felt for Coach Strain and LWW to be dealt a defeat in this way. I considered how I would've felt if one finish in one single event would have gone against us (more on that below ⤵️). Coach Strain and the LWW coaches & athletes showed extreme sportsmanship and class on this night. We are lucky to have a program like this pushing us in our Conference. Lincoln-Way West isn't going anywhere, by the way. They return most of their talented roster next year and you better believe they will be ready for Round 2. Best of luck to the Warriors at the IHSA Sectional and State Meet. Your friends from Andrew will be rooting for you.

When a Conference Championship is decided by one-point, you take a step back to reflect about all the things that had to go right for it to happen.

Jaden Michel stepped up and ran a big season PR in the 100 to place 3rd out of the slow heat of three.

Jaden Michel out-leaned Bradley at the line in the 4x2 to win by ONE THOUSANDTH of a second. We were literally .001 away from not winning Conference.

Carter Bailitz scored big points in the 110hh, 300int, 4x4, and TJ. Tough guy.

Johnny Fisler went from not making an invite roster ever in his career before last week to becoming the 2nd place shot putter in the SWSC. This is ta testament to his hard work and determination.

Tommy Barrett stepped up when it mattered most to win the shot put. 

Brendan Kelly was banged up and not feeling great heading into the 200. I felt like we had such a great meet; I didn't think we needed him to run it (seeded 6th and zero points). Brendan decided to give it a go anyway, thankfully. Brendan ran a .9 second PR (!!) of 22.55 and placed SECOND. Teammate Jaden Michel also scored one point in his fourth race of the night, placing 5th. Without either of these places, no Conference Championship.

Close calls.