Edwardsville cross country girls post perfect score in Tiger Classic Meet

Sep 6, 2018 2:54 PM Sep 6, 2018 3:04 PM

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EDWARDSVILLE – Edwardsville's girls' cross-country team swept the top five places in the Tiger Classic Meet Wednesday at SIUE-Edwardsville Mud Mountain course.

The Tiger girls had a perfect score of 15 to easily outdistance O’Fallon, who took second with 63 points, followed by Marion (87), Roxana (99) and Granite City (108). Belleville West, Centralia, Collinsville and Mount Vernon also had runners in the field on the day.

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“This meet is always a toss-up on what teams are going to do,” said Tiger coach George Patrylak. “Historically, some teams rest their varsities for the big races over the weekend; I think with the weather in the 90s (temperatures were in the low 90s with some humidity in the air at race time Wednesday), a couple of teams were a little bit more cautious in how they approached today; I think our scores weren’t 100 percent indicative of the times we ran, but with both the guys and the ladies races today was more about strategy.

“I felt like our girls, at Granite City (last weekend), we needed to work on closing the pack, so for the first half (of the 3.1-mile, or five kilometer, race) of the race, Abby (Korak) kind of held back and tried to keep things in control; some of the girls tried to keep the pack tighter. I broke apart a little bit more than I would have liked to in the second half, but that’s what we’re going to have to do – we’re going to have to close that gap if we want to be able to qualify for state this year.”

The Tiger girls swept the top five positions for the win, with Abby Korak (20:08.83) leading the way, followed by Maddie Miller (20:32.60), Elise Krone (21:20.68), Hannah Stuart (21:28.72) and Emiley England (21:4810) rounding out the scoring; Kiara Delgado (21:41.54) and McKenna Lueking (22:49.83) finished seventh and eighth respectively to round out the Tigers on the day.