Depth helps Amboy claim regional crown

PERU -- Amboy's Brock Loftus was able to keep up with Ottawa Marquette's Lucas Hoffman at the Class 1A St. Bede boys cross country regional on Saturday.

For the first mile at least.

After that Hoffman pulled away, and continued to pull away to claim the individual title in 16:33.23, but Loftus had plenty of his teammates packing into the top 15, and the Clippers came away with the win as a team, scoring 50 points to beat second-place Newman by 42.

Loftus, after staying on the hip of Hoffman for the first mile, fell back but still held on to claim second place in 16:52.75.

"I felt I could beat him, but when we got to the mile marker he dropped me," Loftus said. "But I know I'll be ready next week [at the sectional]. It was just mental errors. I know I'll be fine. And the team points are really what we're worried about."

Amboy got a third-place run out of Kyler McNich, who finished in 17:07.65 by beating Pontiac's Ethan Schickel in a sprint to the finish.

"I was just thinking 'don't let him beat me, we need these points,'" McNich said.

McNich and teammate Ian Eller went out in a lead pack of four at the start of the second phase along with Schickel and Fieldcrest's Christian Skaggs. McNich started to make his move to the front at the one-mile mark, and Eller soon followed, with the pair of Clippers leading the way by the two-mile mark.

"I realized I could make a move, so I made it, and I kept it," McNich said. "I've always worked on hills and been pretty good on them, so I figured if I powered up this one, I could gas them and make my move them."

Eller took eighth overall in 17:23.01. The Clippers also had Charlie Dickinson take 15th, Andrew Jones take 23rd, Wyatt Lundquist take 24th and Ryan Dickinson take 53rd.

Lucas Simpson led Newman with a 17:43.55 to finish 11th.

"I feel pretty great," he said. "The course was kind of easy, but there's a couple hills in it that took me down. I had to just power through."

He ran in the first phase, holding off Rock Falls' Matt Marcum down the stretch. Marcum finished 14th in 17:57.90.

"I really didn't think I did well," Marcum said. "I'm not confident about it. I was just telling myself 'a little longer' fighting to get to him, but he was surging and I couldn't hold it."

Newman also got a 26th-place run from John Craft. Lucas Schaab was 29th, Noah Welty was 49th and Carver Grummert was 58th

Rock Falls finished sixth as a team with 144 points. Jose Gomez finished 19th, Victor Rivera was 20th, Carter Dillon was 34th, Josue Delatorre was 62nd and Booker Cross was 72nd.