Heffernan moves away in the last mile to win individual championship ahead of Graham

By Michael Newman

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Warrenville, Ill – The concept of the flight meet is a chance for athletes that normally are not in the spotlight to get noticed in each of the seven flights. All it showed Saturday morning at the Wheaton North Falcon Classic at St. James Farm is how strong the 2014 Glenbard West team is. The Hilltoppers won four of the seven flights contested to win the meet with 13 points. Yorkville, the top 2A team in the state, showed their depth finishing second with 19 points.

For the fans, the conditions were not the best as the temperature hovered in the upper 30’s with snowflakes drifting ever so lightly in the air. For the runners, it was a chance to run some fast times even though the surface was soft due to the past 24 hours of rain.

The championship race was example of how fast this course was despite the conditions. Annie Heffernan (St. Ursula Academy, Cincinnati), Lindsay Graham (Glenbard West HS, Glen Ellyn), Skyler Bollinger (Yorkville HS), Morgan Bollinger (Lockport HS), Rachel Hoffman (Central HS, Naperville) and Torree Scull (East HS, St. Charles) pulled away from the rest of the Flight 1 pack going through the first mile in 5:26. Even though the second mile was slow through the turns of this course, Graham and Heffernan separated themselves from the last of the pack by the time they reached the two mile point. Both runners went by that point in 11:30. It was Heffernan that made the defining move in the race separating herself from Graham.

“I felt good at half way. At two miles, I started to feel real tired,” Graham said. “In all honesty, I thought she would be a minute ahead of me.”

In the next half mile, Heffernan opened up a 15 second gap between her and Graham. The Glenbard West junior closed it just a tad at the end but the margin was just too great. Heffernan, the defending D1 state champion in Ohio, crossed the line in 17:00. On a day where it looked doubtful there would be any fast times, her performance was impressive. Graham finished 13 seconds back crossing the line in 17:13.

“We do a travel meet once a year. We heard about this and how they had the flighted races. We all thought it would be really fun,” Heffernan said after her race. “I felt god at 2 miles. I knew there was only .95 miles left. I thought it was time to pull away from the pack there.”

Skyler Bollinger had faded back to sixth with a half mile to go. You made a strong surge at the end to finish third just ahead of Rachel Hoffman. Sara Atkins (Wheaton-Warrenville South HS) moved up through the pack and ended up finishing fifth just behind Hoffman.

It did not look like it would be a good day for Glenbard West at the start. Erin Reynolds (Yorkville HS) overtook Tami Cardenas (O’Fallon HS) just before the two mile and went on to win Flight 7. Reynolds teammate Maggie Klemm broke away from the pack after the 1 mile and cruised to a 22 second win ahead of York’s Erin Davies. That gave Yorkville only 2 points compared to 7 that Glenbard West had. The Hilltoppers went on to win the next four flights with Janie Nabholz winning Flight 5, Kathryn Kenwood winning Flight 4, Grace Rogers winning Flight 3, and freshman Lindsey Payne winning Flight 2.

Yorkville looked strong in their second place finish. Along with their runners in the flight races, Piper Buyanski won the Frosh/Soph race by 43 seconds (18:39) ahead of teammate Kimberly Batdorf. Glenbard West’s Abby Shaver won the Junior / Senior open race running 18:43 and winning by 37 seconds.

Naperville Central had no runners finish worse than fifth in all of their races. The Redhawks placed third with 25 points. Lockport (35 points) and Wheaton-Warrenville South (50 points) rounded out the top 5 teams.