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Valparaiso captures second straight semistate title
Updated: October 22, 2011 10:30PM
There was a sea of green crossing the finish line in the boys race at Saturday’s New Prairie Semistate.
Most of it was the green and white of Valparaiso as the Vikings continued to dominate in winning their third straight postseason race — fourth if you count the Duneland Conference race — and second straight semistate title with 57 points.
That was 83 points better than runner-up LaPorte, which had the first-place runner Mitch Hubner with a time of 15:34.
But ahead of the green-clad Vikings — Ari Coulopoulos was fourth, Ahmad Aljobeh fifth and Peyton Reed 13th — was a different green school. After finishing third at the New Prairie Regional behind Hubner and Coulopoulos, Morgan Township junior Alec Kostelnik finished second, just 10 seconds behind Hubner, who admitted it took an extra effort to hold off Kostelnik.
“I knew he was catching me (near the end of the race), so I just took off,” Hubner said. “I was pushing myself to my limits.”
So was Kostelnik, who was recovering from a sinus infection earlier in the week. He said he felt better on Thursday and Friday, leading to feeling real good after 15 minutes, 34 seconds of hard running on Saturday.
“It feels awesome — it’s good to know that hard work pays off,” he said. “Coming into it I just wanted top 15.”
And Kostelnik admits he was trying to stay close to the Valparaiso group of green.
“I left the pack around the 3-mile mark to get close to Ari,” he said. “(The Vikings) are pretty consistent.”
And their coach had a game plan.
“The plan was to run together and let Mitch go,” Valparaiso coach Mike Prow said. “The guys really executed today.”
That’s not what happened at the sectional, and the Vikings barely edged LaPorte for the title. Obviously the plan worked since it wasn’t close this time.
Finishing third was Chesterton with 158 points, led by third-place runner Tyler Rusboldt who posted a personal-best 15:56 with a huge kick at the end.
“I have no comment on the green guys,” he joked about Valparaiso’s pack of runners behind him. “I tried to hang onto the pack as long as I could. Going into the last 200 (-meter straightaway) I was seventh.”
The biggest surprise of the day was the fourth-place team — Hobart. A week after winning their first regional title in 39 years, the Brickies advanced to the state finals for the first time since that same year, 1972. Brent Dunn led Hobart in ninth while the other four scoring runners were packed between 39th and 52nd.
“This is awesome,” Hobart coach Ty Artherhults said. “We’ve had a nice pack all year. That’s what (the kids) pride themselves on. But the pack has to run hard. I couldn’t be more proud of them.”
Crown Point earned the final state qualifying spot while a pair of Kyles — Lowell’s Kyle Eller in 10th and Wheeler’s Kyle Nurse in 14th also earn trips to Terre Haute on Saturday.
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