Minooka girls claim conference title

Updated: May 5, 2011 10:20PM

The last time Minooka won a conference championship in girls track, not one member of the team was born.

The Indians won the first and last races of the night and featured plenty of career performances in-between during their Southwest Prairie Conference championship effort Thursday at Oswego East.

Minooka scored 108 points to outdistance second-place Oswego East’s 88 and defending champion Plainfield North’s 86.

“We have a deep team and we showed that today,” Minooka coach Kevin Gummerson said. “We had a lot of kids step up. We had a lot of surprises and a lot of kids outperformed their seeds.

“We’ve been building each week and we knew we were going to give all the teams here a run for their money.”

The 3,200-meter relay team of Haley McNamara, Laura Simon, Haley Renison and Kiley Saunders started the meet with a first-place effort in 9:56.1.

During the second to last race of the evening, the junior varsity 1,600 relay, wind and rain hammered the track and participants. It stayed that way until just after the completion of the meet.

“We started the meet off with a win and closed the meet with a win in rough conditions,” Gummerson said.

In a driving rain, Minooka’s McNamara, Angelica Estrada, Saunders and Lauren Jonen combined to win the mile relay (4:06.9).

“To put it all together tonight is a great feeling,” Gummerson said. “The last time we won a conference track title was in 1991. To accomplish what they did tonight was a great feeling for these girls because they’ve worked hard for it.”

Plainfield North’s Cessily Jones was part of three championship performances, winning the 100 (12.61) and 200 (25.69) and being part of the Tigers’ 400 relay (50.44).

“It’s a big accomplishment considering it’s my junior year,” Jones said. “I’m pretty happy with my performance considering the wind was right in my face this last race.”

Plainfield South’s Erin Fitzgerald won two events, running a 2:26.4 in the 800 and a personal-record 59.6 in the 400.

“I’ve been running both events since I started running track,” Fitzgerald said. “They are both my favorite races. I think that’s the first time I’ve done that in two opens, so I’m pretty proud of myself. Both races were tough and had some great competition.”

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