Highland Park entered their first Quad meet of the season with hopes of beating Niles North (which they have done in two invites already), Deerfield (which beat HP at Hinsdale), and Maine East.    The team race plan was executed to perfection!   They got out into the position they needed to be early and raced tough from there.    The top Deerfield runners took the pace out fast and shortly after the mile there were 3 Deerfield, 3 Niles North and 3 Highland Park runners in the lead pack followed closely by 2 more Highland Park runners.    At the 2 mile Beller from Niles North took off and senior Jonah Hanig tried to stay with him.   Beller got the win in 15:13 on the new 3 mile Harms Woods course with Hanig in 2nd at 15:20.   Deerfield's Alex Gold (2011 Cross Country State Qualifier) was the next runner in with junior Angel Estrada closing fast.    These two ended up finishing with the same time, 15:29.  Not far behind were 2 more Highland Park runners, senior Emmett Smith (15:37) and sophomore Ben Casey (15:41).   This was a huge race for Casey who was able to close the gap on HP's top 3 with another strong final mile and blazing final 400 of 71 seconds!   After 2 more Niles North runners finished, Highland Park's Luke Nudelman had an outstanding race to finish in 9th place with a time of 15:53.   This was by far Nudelman's best race which showed tremendous mental toughness after having a bad race at Libertyville on Saturday.    Highland Park's top 5 ran the best team race they have run all season with all five finishing in the top 9 and only a 1-5 gap of 33 seconds!    

The team looks to continue to train hard and progress towards the high goals of this season!

Scores:

HP 15-ME 44, HP 19-DF 36, HP 22-NN 33.

In the Frosh-Soph race, Highland Park only ran 4 freshmen so they were not able to score.   They did have good individual showings with 3 runners in the top 9 for the 2.25 mile race.  Brett Davidson (4th, 12:53), Joe Pinsky (6th, 13:17), and Daniel Arias (9th, 12:45)