DGS wins Naperville Invite!

On Friday afternoon, the DGS girls cross country team made the short trip to the DuPage River Park for the Naperville Girls Invitational meet. This was a 12-team meet hosted by both Naperville Central and Naperville North. It is a rare Friday evening meet that features several quality girls programs from around the area.

Our varsity team has competed extremely well this season and Friday was no different as the Mustangs took 1st place out of 12 teams. DGS scored 42 pts to win easily over #20 ranked Lockport (71 pts) and #19 ranked Naperville Central (77 pts). Katie Stapleton (Sr) and Juliana Stogsdill (Plainfield North) ran side-by-side in the lead for most of the race. They stayed like that for more than 2.5 miles until Stogsdill pulled away with a 4 second win. Katie finished in 2nd place overall out of 104 runners to lead DGS with a valuable low scoring number. Becky Versaskas (So) was able to build on her great performance from last week by moving from an early race 10th place position, all the way up to 4th place by the time she crossed the finish line. The Mustangs impressive 3-4-5 pack closed out the race early to secure the win. Brenna Cohoon (Fr) finished in 1oth place, Melissa Weidner (So) placed 12th, and Kennedy Warden (Fr) placed 14th to give DGS the lowest team score. The final four varsity Mustang runners had a nice pack as well with Olivia Duax (So) finishing in 45th, Gillian Thomas (Jr) placing 50th, Allison Calek (So) placing 52nd, and Kara Petersen (Sr) placing 61st.

In other race action, the F/S team finished in 9th place overall. With several athletes competing varsity and a few more missing the race due to illness, it was a small group of  girls left to represent DGS. Julie LaLonde (So) continued to put together a great season by leading the F/S team as the first scorer. Julie was near the back of the lead pack in about 15th place heading into the wooded section of the course. She ran a great race, steadily moving up throughout the race, to finish in 7th place out of 217 runners. Erin Glennon (Fr) also moved up well over the 2nd half of the race to eventually end up in 23rd place overall. Clare Quirin (So), Marlo Rachie (Fr), and Gillian Musial (Fr) rounded out the F/S scoring finishing in 52nd, 61st, and 137th places respectively.

The JV team ran an inspired race, finishing 3rd out the 12 competing teams. It was the power of the pack that led to this top 3 finish as 4 Mustang athletes crossed the finish line within 15 seconds of each other. Riya Bhasin (Jr) was the first DGS girl to score with her 14th place in the race of 161 runners. Carli Smid (Jr) ran her best race of the season to finish in 15th place. Both girls were followed closely by Hailey Rodden (Jr) in 17th and Victoria Protsyuk (Sr) in 19th place. Amber McCauley (Jr) had a season-best race to round out the scoring with her 27th place finish.

Overall, we had 28 girls race today and 24 of them ran their best time of the season! The difference was due partly to the better racing weather and course conditions, but mostly due to the fact that they went out and competed. We are very proud of the girls and the effort they gave!

DGS individual splits/times/places can be found on the Schedule/Results page. Full meet results can be found on the Athletic.net website.

The Mustangs will split the team next week as the varsity top 7 head to the Peoria Central Invite while the remainder of the team travels to Niles West HS for the Pat Savage Invite.