It is on to the Indiana High School Athletic Association State Meet for the Valparaiso [167], Chesterton [172] and Portage [184] girls cross country teams. Joining the girls will be Valpo boys who took the win with an astounding 45 points.
“We had four in the top 15 and six in the top 21,” Valpo head coach Mike Prow said. “Winning never gets old. This is the next step and hopefully we will do this good at State. This gives us momentum going into the state meet. Today our guys did good; Landon [Davison] had a great race today, Pat [Dalton] and Andrew [Lyp] did good and Taylor [Bisacchi] ran a solid race and that was big for us today.”
Elena Lancioni of La Porte ran an excellent race coming in 4th overall.
“It feels pretty good to help my team. Hopefully we will advance together. I have never done worse than 4th and I kept that goal,” Lancioni said. “I think I had the same time as last week [Regionals] and today the course was pretty muddy.”
With a 7th place finish, the La Porte girls will not advance.
Top 15 girls: 1 Erba - Warsaw 17:06 2 Burgess - West Lafayette 17:38 3 [Bethany] Neeley – Eastern, Greentown 18:18 4 Lancioni – La Porte 18:36 5 Lilly – Twin Lakes 18:51 6 Bearss – Rochester 18:51 7 Lachmund – West Lafayette 18:59 8 Austin – Griffith 19:00 9 L. Johnson – West Lafayette 19:05 10 Ray – Warsaw 19:05 11 K. Johnson - West Lafayette 19:08 12 Daluga – West Lafayette 19:11 13 Thompson – New Prairie 19:15 14 [Brittany] Neeley – Eastern, Greentown 19:17 15 Barber – West Lafayette 19:18
Alec Kostelnik of Morgan Township High School won the boys race.
Kostelnik said, “I opened up out of the woods. I kept going back and forth with Poyner until the last 800 then I made my break. I felt confident in myself but at the same time I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Poyner has already ran a time of 15:28 so I knew it was going to be tough.”
Coach Mike Grennes of Morgan Township said, “He did great. Alec has been working hard all year and it paid off. He has run his best race so far and at the best time of the year.”
Top 15 boys: 1 Kostelnik – Morgan Township 15:45 2 Poyner – Warsaw 15:49 3 Eller – Lowell 15:57 4 Murphy – Warsaw 15:59 5 Coon – Warsaw 16:03 6 Coulopoulos – Valparaiso 16:03 7 Bisacchi – Valparaiso 16:07 8 Arndt – New Prairie 16:12 9 Didion – La Porte 16:13 10 Davison – Valparaiso 16:14 11 Brent – Hobart 16:15 12 P. Reed – Valparaiso 16:18 13 Williams – West Lafayette 16:18 14 O’Shea – Wheeler 16:20 15 Ray – Crown Point 16:20
The IHSAA Cross Country State Meet will be at the Wabash Valley Family Sports Center and run on the LaVern Gibson Championship Course in Terre Haute on Oct. 27 at Noon Central Time.
Kostelnik photo contributed by: Kelly Coulopoulos