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Lockport out to be pace-setter
TEams
to watch
Lockport: A top-10 finish at state seems like a good bet if the Porters stay healthy.
Illiana Christian: The Vikings finished 18th in Class 2A last season with four freshmen among their top five runners. The future is very bright.
Lemont: Like Illiana, Lemont qualified for last year’s 2A state meet with a young squad. Wendy Mazur and Amber Trick lead a team on the rise.
Lincoln-Way Central: The Knights finished fourth in the SouthWest Suburban Blue last season. They’ll look to move up with most of their state-qualifying team back.
Andrew: Led by junior Tiana Karopulos, the Thunderbolts are poised to defend their title in the SouthWest Suburban Red.
Players
to Watch
(in alphabetical order)
Tiana Karopulos, junior, Andrew: Karopulos already has made her mark in cross country, track and basketball, and she has two years left.
Wendy Mazur, junior, Lemont: Mazur, who’s also a soccer standout, finished 82nd in Class 2A last year.
Megan O’Brien, senior, Lockport: The Southland’s top returner has her eyes on a top-five finish at state.
Maggie O’Loughlin, junior, Marist: O’Loughlin made state as an individual last season, finishing 77th, and hopes to lead the RedHawks there as a team this year.
Alena Pacheco, junior, Lincoln-Way Central: Pacheco figures to be the top challenger to the Lockport seniors in the SouthWest Suburban Blue.
Emma Pawlowski, sophomore, Illiana Christian: Pawlowski had the best finish among a fine group of freshmen at Illiana last season.
Stephanie Sanders, senior, Lockport: Along with O’Brien, Sanders is a key piece of the Porters’ strong senior class.
Updated: August 18, 2011 2:14PM
It hasn’t exactly been an ideal summer for Lockport’s girls cross country team.
“It’s an interesting situation we have,” Porters coach Evon Marie Schlotter said. “I have six girls back from last year, but they haven’t all been running through the summer for various reasons. Some of them have a ways to go.”
Lockport’s top runner, senior Megan O’Brien, is coming off a leg injury suffered during track season and just began running again last week. Fellow senior Stephanie Sanders is coming off foot surgery, while junior Courtney Correa hasn’t run regularly since the fall.
So there are some question marks, to be sure. There also is a lot of potential for a squad that was disappointed in its 13th-place finish in Class 3A in 2010 and looking to move up the ladder with its top five runners back.
“I think we can go for the top 10 or possibly even better,” Schlotter said. “That’d make me very happy. We have a huge group of seniors, which will help us out in a lot of ways.”
O’Brien leads the talented senior class. She finished 14th in the state last year and is looking to improve on the 17-minute, 6-second time she turned in at the state meet at Detweiller Park in Peoria.
“Hopefully, I’ll be able to break 17 (minutes) this year,” she said. “I’d like to finish in the top five in the state. I’m pretty excited about this year. If everyone’s healthy, I think we have a great chance to go to state and do better than last year.”
Sanders (79th) and Samantha Stanley (99th) also placed in the top 100 at state last season. (Stanley is a senior this year.) Correa and sophomore Bianca Wiemeyer were the other scorers in the meet for Lockport, and they return as well.
“We have a lot of girls who know what they have to do now,” O’Brien said. “Our experience is really going to help us.”
Schlotter said O’Brien helps to make sure all her teammates reach their potential.
“Megan leads by example,” Schlotter said. “She goes hard in all the workouts and she inspires the other girls to do everything to the best of their abilities.
“We have four senior captains: Meg, Steph, Sam and the fourth is Valerie Renkor, who’s another senior. She’s also a basketball player, and the kids really like her. She’s a leader, too.”
Schlotter is looking to the Sept. 10 Peoria Woodruff Invite at Detweiller Park to see what kind of shape her team is in after the injuries.
“That’ll be a good indicator of how we will do,” she said. “You can do time trials until you’re blue in the face, but you won’t have the same adrenaline as when you’re in a big race.”
Schlotter said the key for her team is to remain consistent. If it can do that, she expects the success the Porters have had recently to continue.
“We have a tradition with a successful program,” she said. “There are certain expectations to come to practice every day and work as hard as they can. Most of our kids reach their potential. If we do that, we’ll be fine.”
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