Andrean’s Conley cruises to title

Updated: September 24, 2011 7:15PM

HIGHLAND — Andrean’s Becca Conley wanted to be pushed hard in order to be her best for the postseason.

Considering the way the 59ers star performed at the 44th Highland Invitational on Saturday, she made it seem like there weren’t any challengers.

Conley ran a personal-best 18:36 — finishing a full 28 seconds ahead of Griffith’s Taylor Austin (19:04) who was second.

Perry Meridian captured the team title with 112 points, narrowly edging out runner-up Kankakee Valley (115).

“I wanted my time to be a little faster today — maybe around 18:30 — but I was really running by myself,” Conley said. “It was close for a little while, but after the 2K, I took off. I thought (Austin) was going to fight a little bit more, but she didn’t.”

Austin wasn’t happy with her performance. She said her troublesome hips started bothering her early in the race.

“I’m so mad, but what can you do?” Austin said. “I wish I wasn’t hurting and was pain-free, but I”m not. My thighs started to tighten up. I was just running. I just did my best. I wish my time was better. I tried to stay with Becca as best I could, and did up until the 2K. Becca did really well today. She was really good.”

Conley said she still believes she can go under 18:30.

“I still want to go faster and I still have some time before the postseason starts to get there,” she said.

Andrean coach Rick Torres likes the way she’s running.

“I was very happy with her race today,” he said “She’s running with a lot more confidence. She’s been really good in her workouts. The nice thing is, she’s transferring what she does in those workouts to her races — and that’s always a good sign.”

Despite heavy graduation losses, defending champion KV was still able to place second overall.

“It feels great,” Kougars’ head coach Lane Lewallen said. “I thought coming in here today, we could push for a top five team finish, but I never dreamed about top two. We won last year, but I’ve got four new faces and this is a very strong field.”

Allison Rockley was the top finisher (11th) for the Kougars, while Brittany Stepp (16th); Michelle Kent (20th) and Kaylin Orsburn (23) were very strong.

Lewallen said Rockley, Stepp and Kent ran personal-bests, while Orsburn registered a season-best.

“You can’t ask for anything better than that,” Lewallen said. “We’re just extremely proud of how we performed. It was an outstanding effort for us from top to bottom. We talked about some goals time-wise, but man, they ran way faster than any times we had talked about for them.”

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