March 16, 2025
Sports

High school girls track and field: Vanessa Flaherty finishes Lyons Township career in fine fashion

By BILL STONE

Lyons Township's Vanessa Flaherty competes in a preliminary heat of the 800-meter run on May 20 at the Class 3A state meet. The senior earned her second state medal in the event as she placed eighth. (Douglas Cottle)

CHARLESTON – After she was disappointed with her sophomore cross country season, Vanessa Flaherty challenged herself as a runner.

“I decided that I wanted to be the best 800 [meter] runner on the team because a lot of them were seniors,” the Lyons Township senior said. “I decided I wanted to be the fastest.”

The Illinois-bound Flaherty completed that achievement May 21 with her second 800-meter run all-state medal at the Class 3A girls track and field state finals at Eastern Illinois University.

Flaherty was eighth with a time of 2:15.71 after taking seventh in 2015.

The 4x400 relay of sophomore Sonia Slusarczyk, junior Maggie Caplice, sophomore Tara Schwarz and senior Luci Lussier also was all-state with a ninth-place time of 4:03.09.

At the West Suburban Silver conference meet, Flaherty broke her 800 school record with a 2:14.41. She might have surpassed that time at state if not for being boxed in twice.

“I just don’t think I had a good start. I got caught behind a lot of people,” Flaherty said. “I just wish I could have run better. There’s nothing you can do.”

The 4x400 earned the ninth and last spot in the finals with a time of 4:03.09 in preliminaries after being the No. 13 seed heading into state.

All four Lions on the relay earned their first all-state medals. For Lussier, it was her first time in the finals in what was her ninth and final state relay appearance dating to freshman year. Three of those state appearances were with the 4x400 relay.

“Awesome. It feels amazing. I’ve never even come close to being in finals,” Lussier said. “It’s honestly such an amazing feeling to run down here at finals. No matter what place we came in, we gave it our all.”

Flaherty earned her first state medal as the youngest member of LT’s sixth-place 4x800 relay in 2014. At state last year, she equaled LT’s highest 800 state finish in a then school-record 2:15.75.

Flaherty is only the fourth LT athlete to earn multiple individual all-state medals.

She also qualified for state in the 1,600 run but scratched for the May 20 event.

“[I’m most proud of] coming as far as I have from freshman year and being able to run the next four years,” Flaherty said. “I’ve come a really long way since freshman year. I’m about 10 seconds faster, which is a lot for the [800].”

LT’s other state competitors were juniors Charlsie Domabyl (high jump and triple jump) and Maryna Hoskins (300 low hurdles), sophomores Julia Cozzi (pole vault), Emma Fink (high jump) and Cara Paliakas (1,600 run), freshmen Sarah Barcelona and Emily Henkel (3,200 run), the 4x800 relay (seniors Natalie Jaramillo and Abby King and juniors Merrell Brzeczek and Megan Ng) and the 4x200 relay (Schwarz, freshman Renata Wingert, Lussier and Slusarczyk). Fink’s mark of 5 feet, 3 inches was an inch from making the finals.