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POST #1 POST #2 POST #3 POST#4 POST #5
DyestatIL Blog #1
Tommy King, 9/14/09
 Hello everyone, my name is Tommy King and I am a Junior at New Trier High School in Winnetka Illinois. New Trier is a large 3A school of over 4000 kids located north of Chicago in Winnetka. My older brother Paul King who was a quarter- miler in high school, encouraged me to start running at New Trier, so I went out for freshman XC (I was formerly a mediocre basketball player). I have met some great people from running at NT, and all of my good friends are runners. The running accomplishment I am most proud of is qualifying for state in the mile as a freshman out of the Deerfield sectional. Last year was a mixed bag for NTXC, we took 2nd in the Crete Monee Pow Wow Invite, just one point behind WWS. We also took 2nd in Conference behind Maine South, despite having all 7 varsity runners finish All Conference (top 14). A week later we won the Lake Forest Regional, and the week after finished a disappointing 6th in the Schaumburg Sectional. It was really tough on the whole team, but we brushed it off and began training for Track a couple of weeks later. Track season went well for us, we had a few very good sprinters, and our distance team was as strong as ever, but our 4x8 was our crown jewel, despite finishing 10th in state, less than half a second from the podium. But we couldn’t be too hard on ourselves, since everyone on the track team ran well that season! A week later I joined the NTXC summer running program, and it may be fair to say that it was the best summer we’ve ever had. Everyone logged a ton of miles, and I topped off at 65 miles per week. I do all my workouts with my friend Noah Graboys, and we push each other in every one.
We have had two races thus far in the season, the Hornet Red Devil Hinsdale Invitational, and the Peoria Woodruff Invitational. The Hinsdale Invite went well for  | The New Trier Trevians finished 4th at the Hinsdale Invite
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us, we took 4th behind Nequa, Palatine, and Wheaton Warr. South. I was very happy with my second place finish behind Beattie of Nequa. The team did very well considering we held out our top sophomore who is a scorer for us, Leland Later, who took 3rd in the sophomore race, and also my friend who had the potential to score tweaked his ankle in a scootering accident the night before. But he made it up by running very well at Woodruff. And on to Woodruff, where we took 2nd behind Nequa Valley! We were ecstatic about this unexpected high finish. Noah, Leland, and myself all took home medals from the varsity race, and so did 6 of our 7 runners in the open race!
Our Varsity squad doesn’t run an invite until Crete- Monee in early October, so we will have a lot of time to train hard and focus on our sure to be competitive quad meet in two weeks where we will square off against Conference rival and Lyons Invite Champs, Maine South.
DyestatIL Blog #2
Tommy King, 9/20/09
Hey everyone, last week was a long race-less week. It seemed to take forever, and it began after school on Monday with a 4xmile workout. After school we bussed out to a trail in Highland Park, which was about .9 miles, and after a 2 mile warm-up we began our first interval. Noah Graboys and I were supposed to do 4 miles at 5 minute pace, give or take a few seconds. But that didn't happen for either of us, and in fact almost everyone was slow. We blamed it on the fact that our makeshift loop was about 5 seconds slow, and the fact we were running on loose gravel and it was quite difficult to get good traction. The next day at our meeting before our run, Coach Dave Wisner seemed to figure out why we were so off the previous day. He looked at our mileage from last year compared to this year and the difference was astronomical! For example, last year my mileage around this time was something like 29,35,40,21,34. And this year it's been 65 each week. Coach concluded that we were just tired and in need of some rest from all the hard work we've been doing lately, and we decided to back down slightly this week. However, on Friday we had a strong performance as a team in a 6 mile tempo. Noah had a great day, setting the unofficial course record for our 6 mile trail in 32:30, and I had a bit of an off day, coming in at 34:05, but still a 6 mile PR. Also, seniors Will-Edwards Mizel and Eric Zuckerman both had stellar workouts, coming in 10 seconds behind me. In addition, we had Juniors Danny Noren, Michael Quirke, Isa Qasim, and Senior Ryan Karnes at 35:15.
We had our first CSL South quad meet with GBS, Waukegan, and Niles West on Tuesday. We won the meet, and we pretty much did just what we needed to do to win. This Saturday we won't be sending our top 7 to the OPRF Roy Gummerson invite. Coach Wisner has decided to hold the top 8-10 out of this meet to rest and sharpen up for next Tuesday’s quad where we face Maine South. That race is going to be incredibly competitive, and looking at how the Hawks ran at Peoria ND and Lyons, we will be fighting for every point.
Also, check out our unofficial team webiste, www.trevianxc.com The site was designed by our Sophomore XC coach, Mark Wukas.
Good luck to everyone racing this weekend
DyestatIL Blog #3
Tommy King, 9/29
 Hi everyone, it's been another very long week. Our top 10 did not race at OPRF last Saturday, but we took the trip out to Schiller Woods to cheer the guys on... and the trip was longer than it needed to be thanks to faulty GPS systems. It was nice to enjoy a meet and not have to run, but I did want to be up there battling it out with Malachy Schrobilgen of OPRF and Chris Spudic of Prospect. Moving on...I just got home from our long awaited rematch against the Hawks of Maine South. It was a quad meet at Niles West that also included Evanston HS and Niles West. It didn't go well but it wasn't necessarily a bad day... I won the race over Maine South's David Eckhart, and Noah Graboys took 3rd. It was a cool day, and I was hoping to PR, but we went out pretty slow. I'm not going to lie, Maine South did beat us soundly, but we did have some PR's in our top group with Juniors Scott Nystuen, Danny Noren, and Isa Qasim running personal bests of 10-15 on a course that was 45 meters long. Maine South ran very well, and I would like to congratulate their squad on a solid race. We got beat, but still, we are going right back into training, just as we would even if we had won because what matters is the end of October and the beginning of November. I'd also like to congratulate our girl's XC team who are looking stronger every week. We had a freshman run 17:58 at Niles West! Our top 7 is looking forward to running at the 41st annual Crete Monee Pow- Wow Invitational, and the rest of our team will be headed to the Pat Harland Invitational hosted by Antioch to race. This is one of my favorite meets that we go to, and I am especially looking forward to running in the championship flight at Crete, which is filled with great runners! Our team took 2nd last year to Wheaton War. South, and this year we are hoping to win, but OPRF and WWS are both very deep and will be tough contenders, and we'll all have to be on our games to get it done.
Crete isn't the only big thing for my teammates and myself this weekend, it is also New Trier's Homecoming weekend. A few of my friends from the XC team and I are going with some girls on the girls XC team, and it's sure to be a really great time! At New Trier it is a tradition for groups of Juniors and Seniors to go as a 'theme', and we're going as 'lifeguards and beach-goers'. Hopefully we won't lose much sleep... but no promises! Best of luck to everyone competing this weekend!
 This has truly been quite an eventful weekend. On Friday evening it was my little bro's 14th birthday, and I celebrated with my family. And on Saturday we raced at  Crete Monee, and unfortunately I woke up at 4:45 AM and couldn't fall back asleep, so I killed some time test driving my brother's new videogames for him. We were among the first teams to arrive at Crete, having made the trip down south in very good time. Traditionally our team performs reasonably well at this flighted invite, and this year we took 3rd behind OPRF and WWS. We scored 26 points to WWS's 15, and the Huskie's 11. Oak Park looked strong, having four 1st place finishers. The course at Crete is longer than 3 miles, more near 5K, and it was in the worst possible shape I've ever seen a cross country course in. There were points where you were almost walking through the mud. By the time I came out of the woods I must have been carrying several pounds of mud on my spikes (and according to a Dyestat poster, I looked like I was going to pass out.) As a team, we ran pretty well overall 1-7, but the best performance of the day has to go to senior Eric Zuckerman, who had a breakout race, finally getting over a sickness. He took 3rd in the 3rd flight, running well on slow course, also the 3rd best time on our team. Noah Graboys also ran very well, winning the 2nd flight by 17 seconds! Also,  Danny Noren turned in a solid time good for 3rd in the 6th flight and 4th on the team. I was fairly happy with my performance, good for another 3rd in the championship flight behind Ben Silver of DGN and Malachy Schrobilgen of OPRF. The mud did exhaust me, it was especially bad during the 2nd mile, you couldn't really pick up the pace at all, you just kind of... slid around. I did have the pleasure of meeting Oak Forest's Ed McDaniel who ran well in a field of 3A opponents. Our next varsity meet is Conference, but we send a freshman squad to Wheeling this Saturday, and we also run everyone sophomore through senior except for our top 8 in the Old Spike invite in Busse Woods, next Tuesday. Later that day was the highlight of the weekend, Homecoming! I went with Danny Noren, Michael Quirke, and Leland Later, and we all took girl's cross country runners to the dance. I mentioned last week that our theme was 'lifeguards and beachgoers', and we went all out on dressing up! Everyone had a good time, and I did get a little behind on my sleep schedule to be honest... but you gotta' live a little! Seeya next week!  It seems like it has been awhile since my last post, and a lot has happened since then! First off, I want to talk about the CSL Conference meet. This was the first year that they combined the North and South Divisions, and it was a huge success! It was really cool to run with the guys from the North, and it made the meet bigger and more fun. After 3 miles of the wet and muddy grass of Glenbrook South, I ended up the Conference Champ, with my teammate Noah Graboys coming in just a second behind me in 2nd place! It was an exciting race, and Maine South's Mike Moore had a good race, coming in 3rd. The North division was won by Pat Wylie of Deerfield, who also turned in a very good performance. We had 3 other All- Conference athletes, Michael Quirke, Leland Later, and Eric Zuckerman. Will-Edwards Mizel finished less than a second out of All Conference. However despite a solid performance by all, we still came in second to Maine South, which was a tough loss because we were much closer this time. But the rest of our team did very well, our sophomores won and went 1-2, and our freshman standout Ethan Kaplan won his race and led our freshman to victory, putting the icing on the cake of an undefeated season! We also swept 1-7 at the JV level, and our Varsity girls turned in a convincing win, with 7 All Conference runners, led by Courtney and Jessica Ackerman... so it was still a really good day for NTXC! Last weekend was also especially exciting, because we volunteered at the Chicago Marathon. Our job was to be 'Elite Escorts', and we had to bring all of the elite finishers to a heated tent where their bags were being held. It was incredibly cool to talk to the top runners, and find out a little about them. Some were not very talkative (which is understandable), but most were really friendly, and appreciated our help. Another cool thing about being at the marathon, was seeing the high school race finish. We all really want to run it next year, but our coach isn't too fond of it because it's a week before conference. I'm really excited for the postseason, and next week we head to Harms Woods for the Loyola regional. Good luck to everyone in their regional meets, seeya next week!  DyestatIL Blog # 6 Tommy King
 New Trier Cross Country is headed to State! This Saturday we had the Niles West sectional and we knew it would be tough to make it out, but we ended up finishing fifth in the sectional, punching our ticket to Peoria. My teammate Noah Graboys and I took 9th and 10th, and got medals. We were really nervous for about 20 minutes after the race, as we were unsure of whether we had made it or not, and everyone was pretty subdued. Then, Will-Edwards-Mizel came sprinting over to our camp screaming, "WE'RE GOING TO STATE!" After that, everything just erupted, we were all going nuts of course, and so were our parents and other teammates that came to watch. It was a truly amazing moment. Our girls team also made it down, with a strong 3rd place finish, led by freshman Courtney Ackerman who won the sectional! I'm not entirely sure, but this is the first time New Trier has qualified both a girls and a boys team in a long time, and I couldn't be more excited for the trip to Peoria, and my first IHSA State XC Meet! |
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