York near perfect in Wheaton North Falcon Classic team title

Anna Harden surge in final mile puts her under 17-minutes again and the championship individual win

By Michael Newman [email protected]

Wheaton, Ill – York Girls Coach Lauren DeAngelis had a simple message to her team before they started to race Saturday at Wheaton’s St. James Farm course: Have Fun.

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This is not a typical race for a team like York that prides themselves on pack running. Each team sends their level runner against other teams runner at that level. The winning runner scores one point for their team and so on. York more than dominated this 16 team field in which 10 of them were ranked statewide in the top 20.

Top ranked York won six of the seven flights run to set a new meet record of 8 points to win the team title in this meet. #21 Glenbard West scored 27 points to finish second ahead of teams in the top five #20 Loyola Academy (33 points), #18 Oswego East (40 points), and # 10 Hersey & #24 Wheaton North who both scored 45 points.

The only race that a York runner did not cross the line first was the championship flight. York’s Bria Bennis made a concentrated effort for the start to push the pace of the race breaking away from the pack just before the first mile. Only Hersey’s Anna Harden was able to stay with the pace.

Bennis held the lead until just after 2-miles into the race. Harden made a move that the York senior could not react to. Harden’s winning time of 16:54 on this winding 2.95-mile course was the second time in as many weeks that the Hersey senior has run under 17-minutes. Bennis finished second running 17:03. There was a 44 second gap before Louisa Diamond of Benet Academy crossed the line in third (17:47). Loyola’s Jane Lynch ran 17:51 to finish fourth.

“I started out faster than I was expecting. All I wanted to do today was come out, compete, and win,” Harden said. “The main plan was to go after the mile, but Bria was really pushing the race. The downhill/uphill portion of the course was the time I wanted to push.”

“I just had to keep my thoughts in my head and tried not to stress out,” Bennis said about not running with her teammates in this race. “My coach told me to stick with Anna as long as I could. She stayed with me stride for stride through most of the race until she made her push. All I could do at that point is push through the rest of the race.

The six flight races that preceded the championship race followed a similar storyline for each of those races. York runner takes the lead. York runner wins by a large margin. It was a testimony of the depth that this team has.

When asked after her race whether she looked back at all during her race, York freshman Maggie Quinn, who won Flight #5, said, “I really never looked back. As I passed a crowd of fans, I did not hear them cheering for anyone else. I just concentrated on the pace I was running.”

York freshman Lily Bianchi led things off by running 18:22 to win Flight #7 by 69 seconds ahead of Glenbard West’s Skylar Miller. Lily Beerhalter of York ran 18:45 to win by 27 seconds ahead of Sophie Mitra of Glenbard West. Quinn’s time of 18:10 won Flight #5 by 72 seconds ahead of Hersey’s Gabi Makowski.

Brooke Berger had the lead after the first 400-meters of her Flight #4 race. The York senior’s winning time of 18:00 was 59 seconds ahead of second-place Ana Kimball of Loyola Academy (18:59). Katherine Klimek pulled away in the second half of the Flight #3 race to run 17:51 for another win for York. Ellie Grammas of Loyola Academy was 54 seconds behind in second.

The most dramatic race of the day was the second flight. It was not the 17:55 winning time turned in by York’s Michaela Quinn. It was behind her that was exciting. Carlin Hass of Glenbard West it seemed was too far behind in the final 600-meters of the race to catch Loyola’s Maeve Norman. Hass dug deep and almost caught the Loyola senior. Both were timed at 18:38 with Norman getting second by four hundredths of a second.