Varsity highlights
The Varsity team ran another race to be proud of, finishing third
among 18 teams on a cool, cloudless, and nearly perfect morning for
fast times - and five of our seven runners registered their fastest
times ever. As usual, the Top Trio led the way, this time with All
State-like times: Morty Stensones-Fornaess, with a sizzling 15:58 and
25 second PR, was the first Pioneer runner in recent memory (and the
first in this web site's recorded history) to run a sub-16 minute
mile. Morty finished fourth in the race, while Takashi Gould (16:02;
11 second PR) was not far behind in 6th and Jeff Hubbard (16:09; 15
second PR) was just two places back in 8th - constituting a better
1-2-3 showing than meet winner Saline was able to muster.
In addition to this fantastic news is some great news: two more
strong PR showings by Andrew Lyjack (17:46) and Eric Anderson
(17:48), with Johannes Widmalm (17:10) hanging in there with a time
just four seconds off his PR. On the less encouraging front,
however, is the apparently growing divide between the Top Trio and
the 4 and 5 runners - a chasm that will need to be filled if this
team is going to live up to the high standards being set by Morty,
Takashi, and Jeff.
Pioneer varsity runners
Name Place Time
Stensones-Fornaess, Morty 4 15:58 PR! (-25)
Gould, Takashi 6 16:02 PR! (-11)
Hubbard, Jeff 8 16:09 PR! (-15)
Delphonse-Widmalm, Johannes 41 17:10
Lyjak, Andrew 67 17:46 PR! (-33)
Anderson, Eric 69 17:48 PR! (-29)
Burghardt, Lang DNF
Weather: cool and sunny
Junior varsity highlights
In an opening race gambit that Coach Sleeman said showed some
"stuff," Sam Milgrom set a blistering early race pace, leading all
runners by eight seconds at the half-mile mark, widening the gap to
10 seconds after one mile, and forcing everyone else to chase him.
And chase him they did - most prominently Hiro Totsuka (17:44) and
Craig Marlatt (17:55), who both ran substantial PRs and not only
caught but passed him. Sam finished third at 18:08 with Mark Antonuk
not too far behind at 18:12 - a 1-2-3-4 finish for Pioneer - and Paul
Corbett (18:25) bettered his previous PR by a half-minute and
finished in 7th place to complete a dominant team score of 17 (with
15 being perfect).
The impressive race for Fastest Freshman also continued: though
pre-race leader Ben Bross (18:47) improved another 24 seconds, this
time Austin Taylor not only narrowed the gap between them but also
burst by him by 12 seconds with a 46 second PR of his own to finish
in 18:35. And to add even more intrigue, Jon Voiles outpaced his
former PR by a whopping 1:16 - not only vaulting him past steadily
improving Nick Ochal (19:23 - a 21 second PR) and Tyler Vane (a 19
second PR of 19:33), but also supplanting Bross for second place by
one second in 18:46.
And that was only the beginning for this strong and maturing JV squad
on a gusty day that nonetheless produced 24 PRs among its 29
competitors. Among the other notable performances - and there were
many - were: Tommy Held's inspiring 3:20 improvement to 24:50; Jon
Levinsohn's (21:37) 1:35 upgrade; Jon Strader's (21:41) 1:14
improvement, and Miles Atwell's (20:52) and Joe Stapleton's (20:18)
leaps forward of 58 and 56 seconds, respectively.
Final notes
The next race is the SEC Jamboree #2. This meet will be hosted
by Adrian and will feature only the four Red division teams -
Pioneer, Saline, Bedford, and Adrian - so it should have an intimate
feel compared with the other races we've run this season. The Adrian
course features an interesting topographical anomaly affectionately
dubbed "Big Bertha," and offers plenty of good vantage points from
which to watch a race. This race will kick off the second half of
the season: four races down, with four to go before our Regional Meet
at Buhr Park on Saturday, October 25!
PR! - new personal record, refers to all-time
PR, not just the best time of the season
The 2003 Honor Roll has been updated
Go Pioneers!