Trophy Time!

The Raider cross country team brought home some team hardware from our home meet for the first time since its inception in 1990! We placed 3rd to two of the best teams in the state and more importantly beat all the teams that our main competition in the state qualifying sectionals. It is a big advantage to be hosting the sectional meet and this was the first meet this year where I asked the boys to really lay it all out there. They performed like the champions that I knew they were. I believe we had 16 out of 17 prs. My new posts are gunna change a little from the past. I will just post each kid witht their time, place and a few notes on how they raced. At the bottom will be pictures from the meet that the parents have been nice enough to take for me. We will race again next weekend at a smaller flighted race where I hope to bring home our first team title in over 30 years! Enjoy and Go Raiders

Kevin Eades 15:31 4th; 10 sec pr; showed that he is capable of being top 15 in the state
Hugh Gill 15:55 13th; 15 sec pr; great showing for first race year, expect big things
Alec Gonzalez 16:06 23rd; 10 sec pr; competes better than any athlete ive ever coached
Brant Watson 16:51 44th; 35 sec pr; huge race; welcome to sub 17!
Gage VanOrder 16:58 50th; 15 sec pr; finally getting out quick and competing
Cody Margetis 17:01 52nd; 10 sec pr; raced tough with pinched SI joint
Alec Cortes 17:13 64th; very off day, has gotta get out early and not fear the pain
Drew Thomas 17:26 75th; getting better after a long 9 month layoff
Austin McGraw 18:12 33rd f/s; 55 sec pr; out quick but held on well
Jacob VanGunten 18:18 35th f/s; 70 sec pr; raced smart for a huge pb
John Tillotson 19:34 151st; finally cracked 20 min
Shane Hubbard 19:35 60th f/s; finally cracked 20 min
Zach Sells 20:07 74th f/s; just missed sub 20 but learning that he can race
Mike Ginz 21:14 91th f/s; only second week on the team
Colton Killian 21:40 198th; learing how to work the middle of the race
Christian Hamilton 22:00 202nd; learning how to work the middle of the race
Anthony Taapken 22:34 206th; gotta learn how to push for 3 miles

Week 2

The Raider cross country team is back in action, just completeing the second week of competition. Saturday September 5 was the Canton Invite, a smaller local invite and last weekend was the monster Woodruff Invite at storied Detwiller Park.

Canton was a great start for the Raiders, placing 2 on the medal stand in the Varsity race and one suprise medal in the frosh race with Austin McGraugh. Kevin Eades ran a courageous race to place 6th and Alec Gonzalez ran the race of the meet to place 8th. I was not counting on him running so fast this year and this could prove to be the real advantage that we needed to win the conference and advance to the state finals. Other notable varsity racers were Brant Watson, Gage VanOrder, and Cody Margetis who all ran PRs in the first meet of the year on a hilly course.

The Woodruff Invite is a huge meet with over 100 teams competing in 3 different classes. We are the middle one, AA, and we ran pretty well to finish 12th out of 32. That was with out team leader Hugh Gill who will be back in action next week at the EP Invite. Six out of seven kids ran PRs, Kevin Eades just off his as he was out a little too fast. He did hang on to finish 16 and medal, as did wonderkid Alec Gonzalez running 16:15 to run another huge personal best. Only top 7 are allowed to compete in the team race, but our other 8 runners talked me into letting them run the open and they soon found out why I was against it. The race started with over 850 competitors at 1 in the afternoon! They did have fun though being that they were never able to run fast enough to hurt cause there were too many people in their way ; )

We have the weekend off to prepare for our big home invite that will feature 7 of the top 10 teams in our sectional. Fortunately for us the sectional race is held at home which could be another small advantatge. The boys have been pretty fired up since the preseason rankings came up and didnt even give us a mention. I centaintly believe that we are a top 12 team in the state with Gill running, but we wil have to get out of a very tough sectional to do that.



That is all the exciting news to report from Central Illinios. Yesterday was probably one of the most inspiring coaching moments of my career. We had a real ****buster of a workout, 4 x (4x400) with 1 min recovery on reps and 3 min on sets. The workout was aimed at getting a fast rhythm in the legs so we did it on the track on a fairly hot day. The kids responded like champs (they love 400's for some reason). The teammanship is like nothing I have ever seen at EP. They were cheering each other on and doing chants at the start of each one. It gave me goosebumps to know that it has only taken me 3 years to get a real xc team together at EP!


I will make another update after our home meet next weekend, hopefully with lots more good news! GO RAIDERS