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CHS cross country competes at Sparta Invitational and hosts first home meet

Posted September 22, 2015 11:00 pm

By Jim Beers Reporter

The Chester High School cross country teams competed at two meets last week, finishing 13th at the Sparta Invitational and second at their home opener on September 17.

The Sparta Invitational featured 15 of the area's most competitive teams. The Boys Division had 111 runners, while the Girls Division had 100 runners.

In the girl's race, Chester had an unfortunate mishap as the gun went off and Taylor Dunning was bumped from behind and took a tumble right away.

Teammate Jessica Kattenbraker stumbled over her and also fell, causing a small pileup. In the mishap, another runner inadvertently stepped on Dunning's thigh spiking her and causing a slight injury.

"We had a rough start to the race with Taylor's accident," Chester coach Curt Gilpin said. "Starter Mark North did not see the actual accident unfold, but he did not think that there was any malicious activity involved.

"It was a big mess for a while. Unfortunately, our girls were on the bottom of the pile of fallen girls. The good thing was that they both got up and powered through the rest of the race."

Herrin's Kara Martin was the overall winner of the meet with her 19:07.84 performance. Keri Burmester from Red Bud was runner-up with her time of 19:55.66, while Kaelan Hall and Maura Farrell (both of Herrin) finished third and fourth respectively with times of 20:06.66 and 20:16.25.

Chester's top runners were Kattenbraker, who finished 19th overall with a time of 22:42.28, and Dunning, who finished 25th overall with a time of 23:17.18 despite the rough start and injury.

As a team, Herrin won the meet with a total of 46 points. As for the Randolph County schools, Red Bud took eighth (189), with Sparta taking ninth (191), Chester finishing 13th (263) and Steeleville did not have enough runners to qualify for a team score.

The Yellow Jacket boys placed 13th out of the 15 teams. Chester's top finishers were Lucas Doiron (38th, 19:22.38), Joshua Haberberger (69th, 20:33.22) and Jason Schwartz (21:38.65).

Steeleville's Mel Mulholland finished sixth (17:52.34), while teammate Hunter Fedderke took ninth with a time of 18:00.06. Sparta's Trevor Buckner took eighth (17:56.88).

Pinckneyville was the winner of the team competitions with 75 points. Of the Randolph County Schools, Steeleville placed fourth (113), Sparta took fifth (122) and Red Bud placed sixth (124).

"The guys ran well and some even got personal-best times for the year," Gilpin said. "There was good competition at the Sparta invite with lots of good schools in attendance.

"These types of races make us better and will toughen us up for the bigger races later on."

Chester hosts home meet

Chester hosted its first home meet of the season on September 17 at the Randolph County Conservation area.

"We will host our big annual Chester Invitational on October 1 and at the end of the season we host the IHSA regional meet on October 24," Gilpin said. "So it is great for us to run on our own course as often as possible so that we learn the course and become familiar with all of the different aspects of the course."

In the girl's race there were 27 runners from Chester, New Athens and Valmeyer. New Athens won the meet with a score of 29 points.

CHS came in second with 46 points and Valmeyer took third with 49 points.

"This was just a small triangular meet and we decided as a team to run through the meet and use it as a quality, hard training day," Gilpin said.

Jessica Kattenbraker was Chester's top finisher with her time of 23:35 and took second place overall. Taylor Dunning finished fifth overall (24:40) in spite of her injury from the Sparta meet two days earlier.

"We debated whether or not to let Taylor run," Gilpin said. "We looked at her closely and let her warm up. She then stretched and wanted to run.

"I agreed to let her run but told her I was going to keep a close eye on her and pull her from the race if I noticed any major difficulty on the course."

Chester's Shea Petrowske finished ninth overall with a time of 26:44, while Ellen Blechle finished 14th (27:40) and Whitney Gibbs took 16th (30:05).

In the boys event there were 29 runners. Ethan Cockrell of New Athens, which had six runners finish in the top 10, won the race with a time of 19:15.

Runner up was Jake Krekel of Valmeyer, who turned in a time of 19:48.

Lucas Doiron finished third overall and had a time of 20:02 as Chester's top finisher. Josh Haberberger finished in seventh place with a time of 21:06 and Jason Schwartz had a time of 21:34 for 10th place.

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