At a loaded meet with tough competition, Minooka’s varsity boys cross country team finished 13th out of 17 teams at the Naperville North Twilight Invitational on Oct. 4.
The top two runners in the race for the Indians were seniors Caleb Kies and Tyler Herrera placing 36th and 52nd, respectively.
“They’re tremendous kids,” head coach Kevin Gummerson said. “They performed well, and I know they wanted a little bit more, but everything is building to this championship phase, but it was a good meet for them.”
The course went around Naperville North’s campus and included nearly two laps on the track. The final 100 meters was down the middle of the stadium’s turf. What makes this meet so special is the fact that it is held at night, which is a cool environment for everyone in it. But that also could end up being a bit of a struggle dealing with the cold.
“The weather was definitely colder, I think it did affect me though my body wasn’t prepared for it and my body was so used to training in the hot weather that it threw me off but you gotta be ready for it,” Herrera said.
But overall spirits in the meet were high and the consensus surrounding the meet was that Minooka still performed okay, but just didn’t quite get the place they were looking for.
“We didn’t have a lot of our runners because they were down running in fresh/soph, but I think we can definitely do a lot better in regionals and sectionals,” Kies said.
Herrera’s thoughts were similar.
“We were kind of spread but I think overall we did what we could so we did decent,” he said.
Overall the meet had lots of high-end competition and the other teams were a tough out.
“It’s definitely the biggest meets of the year, so we competed against a lot of the best teams in the state,” Kies said.
