Above: Naperville North’s Varsity team celebrates their win Friday afternoon at the Naperville Girls Invitational (Photo: Mike Newman)

By Michael Newman

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Naperville, Ill – With the top runners of the Naperville North Girls team resting in Minneapolis for Saturday’s Roy Griak Invitational, you would think that one of the other three ranked 3A teams would have the advantage when taking the line at DuPage River Park for the Varsity race of Friday afternoon’s Naperville Girls Invitational.

The fact of the matter was that the next runners in line for Naperville North stepped up in a big way. The Huskies placed five runners in the first fifteen to take home the team championship scoring 55 points.

“This is amazing. Simply amazing,” Naperville North Coach Dan Iverson said while looking through the results. “They exceeded my expectations today. I was so impressed how they ran. Those kids acted like they belonged in this race. At the beginning of the year, we tell the kids that we do not want any of them thinking that they are just frosh / soph or varsity or junior varsity. I don’t care how fast or slow they are. We want them to carry themselves as a varsity or top tier runner. It is kind of tough for some of these kids that have never run in a varsity race before so the external trappings are different. That is why we bring so many kids to NXR. That is why we get to run 15 runners in two high level varsity races this weekend.”

The course at DuPage River Park is not fan friendly. There is a crowd the first 800 meters of the race before the runners hit the woods for the next 2 ¼ miles. The final 200 meters to the finish is coming out of the woods and back in front of the crowd. Naperville North did all of their race moves in the back woods. They were not close to the front at the mile with the pack starting near 20^th place.

“I was super impressed how they moved in the back,” Iverson added. “There is not much fan support in the back so to do that is so impressive.”

All of Naperville North’s top five that finished were underclassmen. Junior Kathryn Abe was the first finisher for her team in 7^th. Freshman Claire Hill was two seconds behind in 8^th. There was an eleven second gap before Sophomore Natalie Dunnett finished 12^th. Freshman Alex Morris was right behind in 13^th. Junior Elise Chao was the team’s fifth runner placing fifteenth. Their split on the first five was an incredible 19 seconds. All of their top five was under 19 minutes.

“I hope this sends a positive message up to Minneapolis on where we are going,” Iverson said. After the meet was over, he was going to catch a flight to Minneapolis to join his varsity team. “We’ve already texted the results up north. That’s what we have been seeing in practice. We’ve been training real hard on some tired legs. At the end of the day it is going to pay off.”

Lockport, led by the tenth pace finish by Morgan Bollinger, placed second with 93 points. #22 Downers Grove South was without top five runner Michaela Hackbarth who was rested for this meet. They still had top ten finishes by Katie Stapleton (4^th) and Becky Versaskas (6^th) and scored 108 points as did Plainfield North. Downers Grove was placed third because of their lower scoring sixth runner. #18 Naperville Central placed fifth with 117 points.

It was a foregone conclusion at the beginning of the race that either Rachael Lau (Plainfield North HS) or Alana Austin (Naperville Central HS) were going to win this race as they opened up a ten second lead on the rest of the pack at the 800 meter mark.  Lau (in the past) has made her move in race at the mile. She used the same tactics in this race as she did a week ago at the Minooka Flight Invitational when she let Minooka’s Ashley Tutt stay with her. The backfired when Tutt pulled away for the win.

It was the same scenario in this race but a different outcome. Lau’s conservative approach in the race paid off as she waited until after the 2 mile point to make her move. She made up almost half a minute in the final mile crossing the line in 17:25. Austin was next in 17:51.

“I decided I was going to go more conservative the first mile. Alana (Austin) was going at a decent clip. I thought if she could keep the pace the first mile and then I would strategize from there,” Lau said after the race. “I tried to run comfortably (at 2 miles). I wanted to give it my all but did not want to burn myself out. I definitely wanted to end up on a stronger note.”

Claire McCabe (Benet Academy, Lisle) ran a strong race placing third (18:02). Katie Stapleton edged Juliana Stogsdill (Plainfield North HS) for fourth finishing within a second of each other.