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by: Marc Alvarez
The state meet is one of my favorite days of the year. The weather is crisp, the course is ready to go, and hundreds of runners who have all put thousands of miles in over the summer and fall all for one race.
While I've never run in a state meet I have been a spectator/fan/teammate for each of the last four years.
No matter my team's own results a couple of things have always been true.
First, the race was awesome and running back and forth across Detweiler Park, in and out of the triangle, was more than worth it.
Second, it's really hard to tell what happened immediately after the race. Sure it's usually pretty easy to see where your own guys finish, and usually easy to see how the top team did.
Other than that it's kind of a mess. This year in the time after individual results but before team results a couple of my former teammates and myself had to manually add up team scores to get a good idea of what we just saw in the 3A boys race.
We had a good feeling that Wheaton-Warrenville South had won, but even that wasn't clear. Past that we weren't really sure where to start. Eventually, through guessing who we thought had done well mostly based on how teams performed going into the meet, we were able to piece together the team score picture.
The point is the results weren't immediately clear even though we had just watched the race, and even after the results were announced a lot was still unclear.
Clearing up what exactly happened on Saturday is my aim--although it's truly impossible to ever fully capture the minutia of a race with over 200 runners.
First, let's go over the team battle. Going into the race there was a clear favorite, Wheaton-Warrenville South, and then about 10 other teams vying for a trophy. The results reflected that with the top five teams only separated by 71 points.
The final results don't tell the whole story, to better understand the team battle it's necessary to see how the race progressed. Looking at the team scores at the one mile and two mile marks allows us to see the evolution of the race.
At the first mile, as teams are establishing position, Hersey was in the top spot with just 105 team points followed by St. Charles East in second with 145 and Wheaton-Warrenville South in third with 151. The rest of the field's places at the mile are shown below.
By the second mile the top of the field shifted around just a bit with WWS moving from third to first and Hersey and St. Charles moving down into second and third. The biggest movers in the second mile were Neuqua Valley, who moved from seventh to fourth, Sandburg, who moved from 21st to 14th, and O'Fallon, who moved from 22nd to 17th.
The final mile didn't see the team battle changing too much up front as Neuqua moved into third and York moved into fourth with St. Charles sliding to fifth.
But further down the finish list some teams made huge moves in the final mile. O'Fallon shot up from a distant 17th to seventh. Downers North and Barrington both moved into the top ten.
Other teams that finished strong were Hinsdale Central, who moved from 16th to 11th, New Trier, who moved their pack up from 21st to 12th place, and Maine South, who moved from 19th to 13th place.
While it's easy to see which team waited back to make their move in the last mile of the race, or which team went out conservatively the first mile, just looking at changes in team scores don't tell the entire story of race.
Tracking individual runners and their changes over the race also can give insight into what exactly happened during the race.
Monitoring the individual battle certainly is easier than the team as your focus is on just a handful of runners instead of five on each team. But even still, looking at the data to see who the biggest movers over the course of the race is a way to notice some really impressive performances that may have been missed in the 15-or-so minutes of chaos that make up the race.
At the first mile there was still no separation up front as a massive pack stretched back from a group of ten runners who all came through the mile in 4:41.
The second mile saw Josh Methner and Tommy Brady open up three to four second lead on the chase pack of Sam Rivera, Ethan Kern, Rory Cavan and Stephen Moody as the leaders came through the two-mile in 9:28. However there was little change in who made up the top ten
There was some change further down in the battle for All-State honors as Scott Maison moved from 23rd to 12th over the second mile and Dillon Blake moved all the way back from 48th to 18th.
Eddie Siuda and Ryan Kredell also moved up significantly over the second mile--Siuda from 63rd to 29th and Kredell from 49th to 30th.
Just like the team battle, the final mile was where the biggest movement happened.
In the battle upfront the top three stayed the same with Methner winning in 14:11 followed by Tommy Brady in 14:17 and Sam Rivera in 14:24.
Jack Roberts impressively moved from eighth to fourth over the last mile.
Other big movers in the top 25 were Eddie Lennon and Dillon Blake who moved up into 11th and 12th respectively; Christian Knowlton and Ian Geisler who moved up into 16th and 17th; the Neuqua duo of Michael Madiol and Chris Keeley who finished 19th and 21st; and Ryan Kredell who finished 22nd and Guillermo Ibarra who finished 25h.
Outside of the All-State performances there were countless other strong finishes that greatly helped the runners' teams.
O'Fallon had five runners who all moved up 23 or more places in the final mile led by William Ray who moved all the way back from 102nd to 45th over the last mile.
William Ray also has the distinction of the only runner in the field whose last mile was his fastest.
New Trier also finished strong as their top five averaged 26 runners passed in the final mile.
Below are the runners who made the largest moves in terms of place over the last mile.
Here's the master spreadsheet I used for most of this article. Special thanks to @KrisHartner for the initial spreadsheet.
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