Mustangs 3rd at Wheaton South Invite!

Friday night combined near perfect weather conditions with great competition at the Wheaton South Invitational. DGS took advantage of both to post some great results. As a team, the Mustangs scored 72.5 pts to place 3rd out of a very tough 19-team field. Both Oswego and the host Wheaton South teams scored 95 pts to tie for first place honors.

Most of the DGS scoring came from the track as freshman, Maddie Manganiello generated the only field event points by placing 4th in the high jump with a leap of 4-11. The 4x800m relay team missed scoring by a fraction of a second, but the all freshman/sophomore line-up (Katie Stapleton, Kara Petersen, Alyssa Taglia, Gillian Thomas) was able to set a new DGS F/S outdoor school record in the event with their 10:04.57 finish time. The 4x100m relay team (Lauren Wong, Ariana Finley, Soren Umali, Nicole Muccianti) scored the first actual points on the track with their 6th place finish in 50.71.

Abby Kargol picked up the pace for the Mustangs by winning the 3200m run in an excellent time of 10:58.73. Abby out-kicked the rest of the accomplished field on the final lap to gain the exciting victory. Amanda Thate, coming back from an early season injury that caused her to miss the first 8 weeks of the season, ran an outstanding race to finish 5th in 11:19.40.

Soren Umali continuted her impressive sophomore season with huge PR’s and 2nd place finishes in both the 100m hurdles (15.54) and the 300m hurdles (46.92). Lauren Wong added to the Mustang cause by placing 7th in the 300m hurdles (49.10).

Junior, Michaela Hackbarth, received a bigger challenge in the 800m than she expected, but used it to push herself to a season best time of 2:13.95 as she won the race with a convincing kick in the last 200 meters of the race. Even more impressive was her return to the track 20 minutes later in the 400m dash. Michaela raced to a 2nd place finish in a PR time of 58.50, and did so from a very difficult position in lane 9. Rachel Petro placed 6th in the same race with a solid time of 60.45.

Katie Stapleton placed 9th to score points in a very competitive 1600m race. She exhibited a strong kick of her own over the last 200 meters and her time of 5:17.94 was a huge PR. The 4x400m relay team was made up of several multiple event athletes (Rachel Petro, Lauren Wong, Mary Beine, and Michaela Hackbarth) who ran a solid race to finish 5th in 4:05.35. Overall, the Mustangs ran great against some of the area’s best competition and gained some great momentum leading into the conference championship week!