Lady Yellow Jackets run well at state

For the first time in 27 years, a Chester High School girls cross country team qualified to compete at the IHSA Class 1A cross country state meet at Peoria's Detweiller Park.

The Lady Yellow Jackets finished 26th with 636 team points, but all seven runners improved their times from the Edwardsville Sectional on Oct. 29.

Chester's top five runners all recorded new personal bests.

"I am very proud of our girls this year," said Chester coach Curt Gilpin. "We started with small steps and fought our way to the IHSA Class 1A state meet.

"Next year, we will return all but one runner, so we intend to work hard and return to state in 2017."

Chester will lose senior Ellen Blechle to graduation in May.

"Ellen was a true leader for our team," Gilpin said. "As a senior, she kept our very young squad cool, calm, and collected when things got tough.

"Ellen set a good example and shared her years of experience with the other girls. We will miss her dearly."

St. Joseph Ogden was the state champion with 100 points, while Tolono Unity was runner-up with 161 points.

Liberty (74); Richmond Burton (191) and Williamsville (233) rounded out the top five.

The overall state champion was Anna Sophia Keller, a senior runner from Effingham St. Anthony. She won with a time of 16:32 and an overall pace of 5:30.4 per mile.

Keller is now a four-time champion and is undefeated in every race of her running career, with the exception of one second place finish in the 3,200-meter race at the state track meet.

"All season long we tell our athletes that we want them to improve a little each meet," Gilpin said. "There's always tomorrow, we tell them.

Well, (Saturday), we told them that there is no tomorrow until next year. We asked them to give it their all and leave everything on the course.

Taylor Dunning was the first Chester runner to cross the finish line. She had a time of 19:41 and finished 94^th out of 214 runners.

Last week at the Edwardsville Sectional,Dunning had a time of 21:18.

"The weather was perfect for me," Dunning said. "It was cool and Detweiller is my favorite course. The atmosphere at State is unbelievable and it easy to get caught up in all of the excitement.

"It helps me to not think about the pain of pushing while I run."

A lingering ankle injury has bothered Dunning at times this season, but she noted that she had finally felt in competitive form the past three weeks.

"For the first time all season long I felt really good both physically and mentally," she said. "The first part of the season, I was really down because I couldn't train all summer because of my ankle injury."

Jessica Kattenbraker, a CHS junior, was Chester's second finisher with a personal-best time of 20:07 in 120th place.

At the Edwardsville Sectional, Jessica had a time of 21:06.

"The grass was wet and my shoes and feet were soaked throughout the three-mile race," Kattenbraker said. "My feet got kind of numb from the cold and that affected me somewhat at first.

"Once we got well into the race, however, I forgot about it and just concentrated on my running."

Avery Runge, a freshman, finished third for CHS with a personal-best time of 22:01 in 194th place.

Other finishers for CHS were freshman Adeline Blechle (197th, 2:35), sophomore Shea Petrowske (203rd, 23:06), sophomore Elizabeth Soellner (178th, 26:49) and Ellen Blechle (179th, 26:49).

All four runners improved from their sectional times. Teammate Jocelyn Landeros, a freshman, was the alternate runner for CHS and would have competed if one of the other runners would have been unable to run.

"At the state meet teams can have seven runners," Gilpin said. "Times and places for the top five finishers for each team are used to compute the official team score."

The Lady Yellow Jackets were making their first team trip to Peoria since 1989, when they were coached by Jack Herschbach.

"We started the season off with extremely small goals," Gilpin said. "Those goals were for each runner to individually get better every meet and improve at their own pace throughout the season," Gilpin said.

"As we approached the heart of the season we began to think that we could possibly compete for the Black Diamond Conference title. We approached it as if we could win it and we sure did."

Chester finished fourth as a team at its own regional meet on Oct. 22 and fifth at the Edwardsville Sectional, propelling the Lady Yellow Jackets to state.

"Entering the State Meet we knew we were going to Peoria as small fish in a big pond," Gilpin said. "But we continued our approach of improving individually and getting better each meet."

The Lady Yellow Jacket's trip to Peoria began last Friday, when CHS Principal Dr. Sarah Gass hosted a brief send-off assembly for the girls in Colbert Gymnasium.

In Peoria, the girls asked if they could shop briefly at the local Walmart to purchase some blue ribbon.

"During dinner, the girls came up with the idea, on their own, to wear blue ribbons in their hair in memory of James Brockmeyer, the Chester police officer who was killed last week in an auto accident while pursuing a runaway driver after an attempted traffic stop," Gilpin said.

Brockmeyer, 22, of Chester, was laid to rest at St. John Lutheran Cemetery the day before the team left for Peoria. His funeral service and visitation was also held in Colbert Gymnasium.