2018 Conference Champs!
Monday, October 15 2018Saturday was an incredible day for the Mustang XC program with victories in all 8 races between our girls and boys programs. Additionally, DGS had the individual champion in 7 of the 8 races. On the boys side, it was cumulatively the lowest total points we’ve scored between the 4 races combined, a testament to the strength of our program from top to bottom.
The meet got rolling for us with our Freshman team running in their characteristically “mature for their grade” manner. Our athletes were patient and waited until around the half mile mark to really start exerting their effort and showing their fitness. Joey Puccillo closed on the leader from Addison Trail and continued to battle with him over the next mile. Nick Motuelle moved up well about 20 meters back of Joey. After that, a large group of Mustangs were moving up well and by the mile mark looked to be in great shape to take the team title. As the race wore on, Puccillo wore down the athlete from AT and took home the win in a new personal best of 17:11, with Nick Motuelle only 9 seconds back in 2nd. Michael Joseph, coming back from a rough couple weeks of dealing with a nagging injury, moved all the way up to 5th. Robert Del Cotto and Jordan D’Urso were the other scorers for DGS in 7th and 8th. With 5 in the top 8, the Mustangs easily secured the team title over 2nd place Morton. Other award winners were Patrick Dunn in 10th, Ryan Perry in 12th, Chris Neumann in 13th, and Thomas Noller in 15th.
More impressive than the places were the times put down by the Mustangs. Almost every guy ran a lifetime best, with some individuals having huge breakthroughs dropping over a minute.
In the sophomore race, the depth of our squad won the day. While the top two spots went to athletes from Willowbrook and Addison Trail, those individuals are arguably the top runners on their respective teams but were held down in the sophomore race instead ran up at the varsity level. Angel Galvan who has been coming on strong the last few weeks was the top Mustang running 17:11. Ben Tunney placed 5th followed by Caleb DeBoer who ran a minute faster than his previous best for 6th in 17:31. Caleb was our last freshman to finish at Conference in 2017.Colin Meyer was 7th and Nick Novotny 9th to round out the scoring for the Mustangs. Other award winners included Sam Hudec, Nolan Witt, and Luc Alvarez. Great races were turned in by James Ha, Axel Huerta, and Zach McGrath as well.
The varsity race saw an awful lot of horizontal stripes up front with DGS dominating the competition. Guillermo Ibarra of Morton stamped out the pace (a John Sipple reference) early with 4 Mustangs in tow. Ibarra threw in surge after surge trying to shake off the Mustangs, but was unsuccessful. Eddie Siuda pulled away around the halfway mark and went on to win in a course record 15:02. John Heneghan and John Norris both passed Ibarra around the 2 mile and finished 2nd and 3rd. James Weigel battled with Ibarra until the finish and was right behind him in 5th. George Willer and Canyon Stage were 6th and 7th overall, while Matt Peloso was 13th. For the 4th year in a row, all Mustang harriers garnered all-conference accolades. The DGS squad finished with a near-perfect score of 17 points.
The final race of the day was the JV contest. DGS ran exceptionally well taking 12 of the top 16 places, including the first 9. Nick Dziedzic was the champion running fast for being by himself throughout in 15:58. Tyler Bleau was 2nd, Ben Skibbe 3rd, Nathan Luczak 4th, Brock Royle 5th, Stephen Nicholson 6th, Max Wascher 7th, Jay Wiseman 8th, Carlos Mendez 9th, Sean Andrews 12th, Vince Llanes 14th, Caleb Radcliff 16th. Also running tremendously and getting lifetime bests were Zachary Krauter, Joe Hyzy, Matt Straus, and Thewlis Nguyen.
Overall, DGS had 36 of the 64 award winners at Conference, which was a goal we’ve aspired to reach for years and finally accomplished it.
The team now heads to Katherine Legge Memorial Park in Hinsdale for the IHSA Regional meet this coming Saturday. The boys race at 11:15 a.m.
Go Mustangs!
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