The cross-country season is more than a month old for the Oak Park and River Forest boys and girls teams, and already the stakes are getting high.
The teams will head downstate to the Peoria Notre Dame Richard Spring Invitational at Detweiler Park on Saturday, the home of the IHSA state meet and an affair that showcases most of the top talent in the state.
“It’s a super-fast course, it’s pretty flat the whole time and not many tight turns,” said junior Nick Houghton, running in OPRF’ boys’ top six. “It’s a great place to run fast times. It’s a very, very competitive meet.”
Senior Yonny Rafter agreed, but pointed out that’s just the beginning of a meat grinder midseason schedule, which includes the Palatine Invitational Meet of Champions on Sept. 27 and the Naperville Twilight Invitational on Oct. 9-10.
And then comes the West Suburban Conference meet, followed by the state series. But Rafter swears his teammates, like Houghton, junior Connor Harmon and seniors David Schiff, Brady Creel and Julian St. Pierre will be ready.
“We put a lot of work in over the summer,” he said. “We’re very well-rounded and have high hopes for each other.”
Count boys coach Chris Baldwin in that camp.
“They took a lot of ownership in their own training and ran a lot of more miles this summer,” Baldwin said. “David, Yonny and Julian and Connor ran in the state meet last year in cross country, so they took some good experience from that.
“They’ve been doing the small things. One thing we preach is getting enough sleep. Your body has to recover from working hard.”
Most recently, the Huskies took fourth Saturday at the DePaul Ram Invite with 119 points, beating Loyola Academy by nine. Schiff took fifth overall with a time of 16:12.70, which was nifty considering Mother Nature was a sourpuss that morning with thunderstorms.
Baldwin carries about 100 runners program-wide and will take about 25 Friday to Peoria, with the rest of the crew arriving the next morning.
“I think it’s important to run on the state meet course,” Baldwin said. “The course stays the same but the weather changes. It’s a good indicator as to, “Hey, how do you compare yourself year to year?””
Baldwin has been head coach of the boys team since 2015 and has an astute group of assistant coaches, including Abel Reyes and former collegiate Division I runner Stephen Traphagen, who joined the program last year.
Conversely, Laura Turk is the interim head coach on the girls side, in place of Ashley Raymond, who is on maternity leave.
“She’s done a great job getting our athletes in a competitive mindset,” Turk said of Raymond. “It’s been a great program for a number of years. It’s fluid walking into this space knowing this all has been established.”
Turk, who has about 50 runners in her program, will also take those athletes to Peoria this weekend. What does she expect?
“We want to get a fast race under our belt and have a strong path to run against and take a measurement of where we’re at,” she said, and that shouldn’t be a problem with the amount of talent she has to work with.
The ringleader is senior Violet Schnizlein, who started high school as a track sprinter but then made the transition to distance.
According to Turk, Schnizlein has done nothing but picked up exactly where she left off as a junior and OPRF’s lead sectional runner. She’s feeling confident, mostly because she’s worked hard to push herself in workouts. Like her male counterparts, she’ll be ready for Detweiler on Saturday.
“It’s a fun mindset, we get to travel, but it’s important to stay focused and excited for the next day,” she said. “Peoria is a great course, and this is a great opportunity to run fast and get your season going.”
Schnizlein took 11th in 19:05.70 in OPRF’s most recent outing, the 43rd annual Fenton Kurtz Early Bird Invitational on Sept. 6. Junior Emily Jones was 17th at 19:53.40, while junior Bella Crowe was 21st at 20:08.30.
All told, the locals took third with 101 points. But bigger things are ahead Saturday, Crowe insisted.
“It’s a two-day thing for us, so it makes it more stressful,” she said. “It’s a big week, a long procedure, but it’s also exciting because there are so many people to compete with.”