Watcke repeats as Hornet-Red Devil Boys Champion
Hinsdale Central opens with convincing win; Prospect dominates Girls divisions behind Erickson win
By Michael Newman [email protected]
Hinsdale, Ill – Daniel Watcke’s final season of high school cross country running started a little later than expected. The Hinsdale Central senior’s track season went longer than expected staying in Oregon until the end of June.
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His kick at the end of the Saturday’s Hornet-Red Devil Invitational started earlier than expected compared to last year where he waited until the final 200-meters for the win. Saturday he made his move with a half-mile to go to pull away from the pack and to claim back to back wins.
“I broke up my breaks after U-20 Nationals to give myself a little more time after track, Watcke said after his win. “I may have put in some mileage than I did last summer. We are in the middle of a tough training block right now.”
Watcke made it look easy at the end running 14:56.3 for the win. Any times under 15:00 this early in the year on this tough Katherine Legge Memorial course deserves notice. Watcke played it cool for the first half of the race letting Parker Nold of Oswego East and Jack Casaccio of Palatine set the lead. Nold and Watcke broke away the field just after 2-miles. The move came 800-meters later.
Zac Close of Neuqua Valley matched his great race last week on his home course with another fine effort. Close stayed back but looked strong making a move on Nold in the final straight leading to the finish. Nold held of Close both running 15:02 and separated by two tenths of a second.
Zachary Balzer of Minooka made it into the top five running 15:11 to finish fourth. Michael Skora of Hinsdale Central was the second Red Devil runner to come across the line running 15:16 to finish fifth and just one second ahead of Mason Krieg of Palatine and Akili Parekh of Latin School who finished sixth and seventh.
Hinsdale Central enters this season as the top ranked team in Class 3A. They showed why in this meet only scoring 67 points to claim the championship. Led by Watcke and Skora in the top five, the Red Devils placed their next two runners in the top 15. Overall, they had 5 runners in top 35 with a 78 second split on the group. Aden Bandukwala (11th) and Jesse Gamboa (15th) were the third and fourth runners for the team. Grant Miller finished 35th as the team’s 5 runner. The split from…
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