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Round Lake running away with NSC Prairie title
Updated: September 19, 2011 9:20PM
Juan Carrera graduated from high school in Round Lake last May, and he’s now running cross country for the Southern Illinois University Salukis.
Yet, Carrera’s impact on Panther cross country is still very much in evidence, even though he’s now running 300 miles away.
Said Sergio Martinez, who finished fourth individually on Monday and helped the Panthers beat Antioch 15-50 and highly-regarded Lakes 25-33 in a key North Suburban Conference Prairie Division meet: “We learned a lot from Juan. He was out there pushing himself every day because he wanted to earn some respect for Round Lake. We were disappointed that we couldn’t win the division with him last year, so we’re really pushing it this year.”
Last year, with Carrera winning all the races, Round Lake went 5-1 in the NSC Prairie and Lakes went 6-0. After Monday’s results, Round Lake is 4-0 this year with Grant and North Chicago left to race.
On Monday, Lakes’ Ryan Prais and Josh Camp finished 1-2, but Round Lake — led by Angel Carrera, Martinez, Anthony Areanas, Robert Paz, Victor Contreras, Manuel Ocana and Orlando Ortega — went 3-4-5-6-8-9-10 to secure the important win.
Angel Carrera is a junior and the younger brother of Juan. He said the change in the sport at Round Lake is like night and day.
“It’s a lot different,” he said. “My freshman year, our second-fastest runner was a 17:39. Now, that’s our slowest runner. We have a team that can contend with other good teams. We’ve been training all summer for this.
“Lastl year, we thought we were pretty good. This year, we really found out how good we could be last Saturday when we finished fifth at Warren (a prestigious, big-school meet).”
Kevin Brady is in his seventh season as Panther coach, and he’s watched this program go from also-ran to contender to — now — perhaps division champion.
“We’ve had a lot more people come out for cross country. We’ve had around 40-something the last two years. Besides that, it’s having kids running more consistently,” he said of the program’s surge. “They’re on the distance team during the track season. Most of these kids came out for summer camp. So, it’s not just them coming out when the season starts. They train the right way.
“We’ve been trying to build the program with some younger guys. Between last year and this year, we only lost one of our top seven guys to graduation, Juan Carrera. Obviously, it’s tough to lose your top guy, but everybody else comes back ready to go, and they’re a year older, a year more experienced. All those factors combined are the reasons for our success.”
The coach added that cross country definitely has caught on in the community.
“Over the past couple of years, we’ve had more and more freshmen come out. It used to be that we had almost no freshmen come out at all. I’ve had years where we had one freshman on the whole team. It was a little ridiculous,” he said.\
“Now we’re seeing more freshmen come out. Not missing that first year of running is really important. We didn’t have a feeder program, so kids would come in not knowing what cross country was about, so when they came out sophomore year, they’ve already missed a year of training. Now with them coming out earlier, we’re able to build on things.
“With our success, I think we’ve gained more people.”
The key, of course, is sustaining success, and it appears Round Lake is positioned to do that.
“We’re hoping,” the coach said. “Next year, we lose a couple of guys in our top seven, but we’ll retain what I think are two of our top three or four, and we’ll have a solid group of at least five. We’ll have some frosh/soph guys that should be able to step up and take spots.
“I look at our future and it looks like we should be decent for the next couple years at least. Three in our top seven are seniors, Sergio Martinez, Tony Arenas, and Victor Contreras, but everybody else is a junior or sophomore.”
The next big division meet in next Monday at Grant. The Panthers actually will be running against the Bulldogs on Saturday as well in an invitational.
LAKES/ANTIOCH/ROUND LAKE
TEAM SCORES
Lakes 16, Antioch 42
Round Lake 25, Lakes 33
Round Lake 15, Antioch 50
TOP FINISHERS
1) Ryan Prais (Lakes) 16:14.
2) Josh Camp (Lakes) 16:37.
3) Angel Carrera (Round Lake) 16:58.
4) Sergio Martinez (Round Lake) 17:03.
5) Anthony Arenas (Round Lake) 17:18.
6) Robert Paz (Round Lake) 17:34.
7) Rich Baker (Lakes) 17:37.
8) Victor Contreras (Round Lake) 17:45.
9) Manuel Ocana (Round Lake) 17:46.
10) Orlando Ortega (Round Lake) 17:53.
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