Last Saturday, the boys cross country team raced in the Central Suburban League (CSL) championships at Maine East High School. By the end of the meet, the boys had won the CSL North championship.
Going into the meet, the team was expected to take second to Highland Park, the defending conference champions.
“On paper we weren’t expected to win,” senior captain Dhruvil Patel, said. Despite not being favored, the varsity squad was able to soundly defeat their competition. “We took Highland Park by surprise and all of our hard work paid off.”
In addition to the team victory, four Niles North runners earned all-conference honors by placing in the top 14 in the varsity race. They are sophomore Tommy Montgomery, senior captain Nebil Mohamed, junior Martin Barr, and Patel, who also became the conference champion with a time of 15:22, winning the CSL North by over 10 seconds.
“Second place overall and winning the CSL North felt great, and it felt even greater knowing that we won the conference title too,” Patel said.
The varsity runners were not the only ones who had strong races. Many runners earned personal best times, which is especially impressive given the rain and mud that were present at the race.
“Most importantly, the athletes at the varsity level along with frosh/soph and JV had some of their best races of the season, under less than ideal conditions,” head coach Dave Shafron said. One athlete who had a strong race was freshman Connor Perrault who won the sophomore race with a time of 16:37, nearly 30 seconds faster than the next best finisher.
Another notable performance belonged to sophomore Brandon Nguyen, who achieved a personal record (PR) on Saturday. “Last Saturday was one of the most difficult races I’ve ever run in this year. I didn’t have high expectations of me surpassing my old personal record due to the muddy course and freezing temperatures,” Nguyen said. “But when I finished the race off with a new personal record of 18:12, I felt a great feeling of accomplishment.”
Cross country races are scored by taking each teams’ top five finisher’s places and adding them together to form a team score. A lower score is considered better, with a perfect score being 15 from a first through fifth place sweep. While initial rankings for the meet estimated Niles North would take second with 55 points, with Highland Park winning with 50, the Vikings scored a major upset by winning with 41 points, while Glenbrook North, the second place team in the CSL North, had 65 points.
“It’s been a couple of years since we have had sole possession of a cross country or track conference championship so it definitely felt good to get back to that point,” Shafron said. “Plus, we were not favored going into the meet, so to win by more than 20 points and get personal bests on a muddy course was reaffirming to our training plan.”
With the conference championship behind them, the team’s focus is now on the challenges that remain before them. “We will continue to take everything one week at a time and one challenge at a time. Now, our next challenge is to take care of business at the IHSA regional and continue implementing a smart race plan,” Shafron said. “We expect to move on from regionals, where we will then compete in the IHSA sectional championships. From there, we will look forward to competing as a team or individuals at the IHSA state championship.”
Though the cross country team has had many strong runners come through its program, the team has not qualified for the state finals since 2000, where the team finished tenth. “We are in the toughest sectional in the state with 10 of the top 25 ranked teams in the state,” Patel said.
The Niles West sectional, which the Vikings compete in, also contains teams such as York High School, a team that has won the state meet 28 times since 1962. Only five teams advance to the state meet. However, despite the strength of their competition, the team remains optimistic.
“I think if we execute a perfect race we’ll end up surprising a lot of those teams,” Patel said. The team’s current focus is on closing the gap between their first and fifth runner, a factor that often decides championship races. “Our only challenge now is putting 5 guys in the finish within :60 seconds of our first runner. With a front runner like Dhruvil Patel, that will make us a strong team moving forward,” Shafron said.
The cross country team will be racing in the Loyola Regional race at Harms Woods (the intersection of Golf and Harms) this Saturday, October 25 at 2:45 p.m.
