Girls track: L-Way North starts tradition

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Jordan Wallace was so happy to qualify for the IHSA Class 3A track championship Saturday, she could have floated to Charleston.

And she didn’t even win her 3,200-meter race. Wallace came in second to Lincoln-Way Central’s Monica Hahn at the Homewood-Flossmoor Sectional.

“This is the greatest thing in the world,” Wallace said after becoming the first Lincoln-Way North runner to advance to the state finals at Eastern Illinois University. “To go down and represent North for the very first time, it’s an honor.”

Wallace will have company. About an hour later, sophomore Lyndsay Vlosak won the 300-meter hurdles, becoming the first Phoenix to advance to the championship meet as a sectional champion.

The duo accomplished the feat in Lincoln-Way North’s first year of operation.

“It was hard at first, coming to a new school to start new traditions,” said Vlosak, who, like her classmates, had gone to Lincoln-Way East before this school year. “But it’s really thrilling. And Jordan, she pushes me every day in practice. It will be great to have someone downstate with me.”

Vlosak’s winning time of 47.30 seconds was four-hundredths better than runner-up Molly Szilard, of Lincoln-Way East, a former teammate.

Wallace’s improvement in the 3,200 has come only in the last few weeks. Her time of 11:33.85 was just off the personal best she ran last week. It came with Wallace running with a question mark in her head.

“I went out thinking it would be me and Kellie Kuzmuk from Andrew with me,” Wallace said. “She wasn’t there, and I freaked out. Then, I had times to hit for the state-qualifying mark, and I was just missing them. I was about two seconds off.

“The last 800 meters, I wanted to make sure I maintained my distance from Monica. I didn’t want her to get away from me.” Without Kuzmuk, who finished third, as a pacer, Wallace kept on and advanced by finishing second.

While Wallace and her school are new to the state championship, Andrew’s Geena Loesch is an old hand. The junior will be making her third trip to Charleston thanks to winning the 800-meter run (2:16.30), leading the Thunderbolts to a come-from-behind win in the 1,600-meter relay (4:05.05) and coming in second in the 400 (1:00.67).

Thornton — with Ashley Stacey finishing second in the long jump (17-3 1/2) and winning the triple jump (36-7 1/2), titles coming in three other events, and second- or third-place finishes being achieved in five more — took its fourth straight sectional title, edging Homewood-Flossmoor by 3.83 points (76.33-72.50).

Injured during the triple jump, Stacey didn’t run in the 200-meter final, in which she was the favorite.

“These girls, the heart they have, is absolutely amazing,” Thornton coach Vince McAuliffe said. “They never stopped believing in each other.”

Homewood-Flossmoor’s Tyler Burke qualified in three races. She was on the winning 400- and 800-meter relay teams (48.86 and 1:45.90, respectively) and finished second to teammate Jeronda Womack in the 100-meter dash. Womack, who ran 12.28 in the 100, anchored the 400 relay quartet to a season-best time of 48.86.

Lincoln-Way East’s Megan Weller won the pole vault (11-9), and Marian Catholic’s Amber Simonton won the 200 (26.44).