Plainfield East boys, Lockport girls take meet

Updated: September 3, 2011 4:05PM

The Plainfield East boys cross-country team survived temperatures approaching 90 and a quality field to win its first invitational championship at the Plainfield Central Invite Saturday.

The Bengals placed three runners in the top 10 and finished with 52 points.

Joseph Suarez (fifth place in 16:34), Collin Warke (eighth in 16:50) and Jake Runnion (10th in 16:59) led the Bengals to their record-setting performance.

Individually, Lockport’s Thomas Razo was first, covering the three-mile course in 16:03.

“Today, the goals were to hang back the first mile and from there, try to win the race,” Razo said. “I ran a tactical race today because of the heat, so I was happy about that.”

Lincoln-Way East finished second (101 points) and Lockport was third (104). Tom Rotondi took seventh in 16:46 for the Griffins.

“We’re not ranked this year and we have no expectations,” Razo said. “We’re just having fun out there. Today was a perfect example of that. We’re in a good position to qualify for state at the end of the year.”

So are the Lockport girls.

The Porters placed three runners in the top seven to win the 14-team invite.

“We wanted to look at the big picture,” Lockport coach Evon Marie Schlotter said. “We had a goal in mind. We didn’t even look at taking first, second or third. We looked at what we wanted to accomplish here and we did that.”

Every team should be so fortunate.

“They stuck to the plan and ran outstanding,” Schlotter said. “I couldn’t be more pleased.”

The same could be said of senior Megan O’Brien, who won the individual title for the third year in a row.

“I really didn’t have any personal goals today,” said O’Brien, who finished the three-mile course in 19:01. “It was kind of a laid back race. It was more of a workout for me.”

“She stayed with the pack for the first mile and a No. 1 runner should be able to do that, then go,” Schlotter said. “You should be able to catch a lot of the runners if not everybody.”

Stephanie Sanders ran a 19:46 to take third and Aubrey Elwood placed seventh in 20:17.

Westmont was second with 78 and the host Wildcats placed third with 98 points.

A heat index in the low 90s took a toll as a number of runners were taken away from the meet by ambulance. Most of those were for dehydration.

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