Minooka Junior High girls win 3A state cross country title

Olivia Krolcyzk had trained to run cross country for four years, and now she and six other teammates faced 250 other runners in the state tournament and hoped to beat Yorkville, which pushed ahead of the Minooka team at sectionals.

“I had to relax myself and try my best. About 800 meters in, I knew I was the first Minooka girl and I could only see a few people in front of me, so I felt pretty excited and proud of myself,” Krolcyzk said. “When I finished, I had tears of joy in my eyes because I finished 14th, and my goal was to finish in the top 20.”

On Oct. 15 in Normal, the Minooka Junior High School girls cross country team took the first-place trophy in the Class 3A girls cross country state meet. Coach Thomas Neisler said he took 10 girls down to state, where seven ran and the top five spots counted toward the team points.

He said the team this year worked hard at distance and interval training and enjoyed running.

“Our strategy was to run together and stay as far forward in the race as we could,” Neisler said. “All seven girls finished within 20 seconds of one another, which was a major accomplishment.”

Although not all seven girls’ placements counted toward the team score, Neisler said, the sixth and seventh runners’ placements took a spot of another runner, so their placement points essentially counted against the other team. And the two-point lead from second place would not have happened without those last runners.

Yorkville, which Neisler and his team predicted to win, took second place behind the Minooka Indians. Krolcyzk took 14th place over all of the 250 runners with a two-mile time of 11.54 minutes.

The MJHS boys team, who left the meet with a third-place trophy, ran a strong race according to the team plan.

“The boys followed our game plan to start fast and run along the edge,” coach Mike Lanahan said. “If you run in the middle, you can get stuck in the pack inside, you can’t advance and you are at the mercy of the pack speed.”

Lanahan said his team had a runner, Mason Engler, at the front of the pack most of the time and finished fourth with a two-mile time of 10.39 minutes and three other runners finished in the top 25 with run times under 11 minutes.

On Monday, the school was notified of a glitch in the computer scoring system, after a runner had been disqualified, and the third-place trophy, no longer belonged to the MCHS boys team. Lanahan brought the team into the office to break the news.

“I told them that these things happen and we have to give back our third-place trophy, for a second-place trophy. They were so excited,” Lanahan said.

MJHS Athletic Director Adrianne McKerrow said, as far as she knows, this was the first time both female and male teams in a sport came home from a state competition with hardware.