In sports, teams set plans for their season to achieve the goal they set for themselves; however, these plans contain a lot of unexpected speed bumps which is what the Boys’ Cross Country team found out this season. Even some athletes on the team found this out the hard way that there really is no easy path to success.

Early on in the season for this team, perennial lead runner and senior captain, Jack Sebok, went down with a stress fracture in his left foot. This caused him to miss most of the season and was only able to race the last four races of the year.

“The adversity we went through with Jack being injured for six weeks, in a way, helped our team I think. It allowed for guys like Omar Paramo to develop. It helped Brenden McGath step into the varsity senior leadership role. I think our team had a sense of urgency once Jack came back that ‘we better run good because Jack is back now.’ “said two year Head Coach, Andy Derks

In only his second year as head coach of the Cross Country program, after previously being assistant coach for years, the team has already seen its success skyrocket over the past two years. In his first year as head coach the team qualified as a team for the sectional meet after having only individual qualifiers in years past.

The team returned multiple top runners from the year before including Sebok, sophomore Ben Otstott, and junior James Suchy. All three of them contributed at the varsity level last year in the post season, which the post season includes the conference meet, regionals, sectionals, and state.

In the four races that Sebok ran this year, he was able to set a new personal best at the state meet by going sub-15 minutes and running a time of 14 minutes and 56 seconds. He placed All- Conference and qualified for state for the second year in a row. At the Regionals meet, Sebok placed ninth in the race, then moved up three spots the next week at Sectionals where he placed sixth with relatively the same teams he raced the week before.

With Sebok’s absence, the team relied heavily on a tight pack upfront to be able to compete in major invites and races. While the team somewhat struggled to do this early on, they were able to accomplish their plan in the post season. They called their idea of a tight pack a “bowling ball”.

This “bowling ball” method got this team to place third at conference with four athletes receiving all-conference honors. The most in school history in one year.

Two of the athletes receiving these honors were Sophomore in the varsity race, Otstott and rookie Sophomore Omar Paramo. Paramo is in his first Cross Country season ever and was part of the top four runners on this team week in and week out. He finished his season with the third best time on the team with a time of 15:37 for three miles.

“It was always awesome, as one of the seniors on this team, to watch guys step up every week and see such a huge contribution from our young guys so that I know when our class leaves that the team will only be getting better the next year. Our team has always done a great job at recruiting new runners or young athletes which really showed this year as a lot of them played a major role,” said senior captain Matt Hosler

With the tight pack that was mentioned before, the team was able to place second at their Regional meet to the third place team at the state meet, Nequa Valley. With this momentum, the team had high hopes to place in the top five at their Sectionals to advance to State. Once Sectionals hit, Sebok was able to place sixth at a rained down course in West Aurora with the rest of the team not far behind. Otstott, McGath, and Paramo all finished in the top 25 with fifth man James Suchy placing 31st. This led the team to not only qualify, but place second at their Sectionals and shock the Illinois world of cross country.

“It is a great feeling, a day later I was still on cloud nine. The 30 minutes immediately after the race were the best minutes of my professional life. I felt such a release of emotions. To see our guys go out and execute so well in such miserable conditions. I could not have been more proud. I think I hugged over 100 people. A lot of hard work goes in behind the scenes to allow for these breakthrough moments. Our momentum has been building the last few years. The talk of qualifying for state has always been there, but this is the first year it felt like a true possibility,” said Derks.

The team was able to qualify for state for the time in school history after placing second to Nequa Valley once again. They then went to the state meet and placed 18th overall with multiple runners having PR’ed.

The future is bright for this team as they return three sophomores from their top seven, all having run 15:40 or under along with two Juniors in Suchy and Walker Wells.