Antioch Invite Recap

Highland Park competed at the 16 team Antioch Invite which took place on the indoor track at the University of Wisconsin Parkside.  As a team the Giants struggled to score a great deal of points, but still had several notable efforts.

The highest finisher for HP was senior Ryan Kriozere in the 55 Meter High Hurdles.  He took 2nd place and ran a personal best (7.76) despite hitting multiple hurdles during the race.   That finishing time is right at the school record for this event.  When Kriozere runs a clean race without hitting any hurdles it will be exciting to see how fast he can go!  Also in that race finishing in 6th place with a 8.25 was junior Zev Motew.  This was his first meet in a year and since having ankle surgery.   Look for him to continue to shake of the rust and keep getting faster.

Freshmen Jose Reyes ran a gutsy race in the 3200 Meter Run.   This was his first 3200 of the season and he smashed the HP freshmen indoor record for this event by over 13 seconds as he ran  10:06.23!  He finished in 7th place.

Senior Tucker Thompson and sophomore Zach Auerbach led the way for the throwers.   Thompson finished in 4th place for the Shot Put with a throw of 43’2”.   Auerbach was 16th with a personal best  toss of 39’6”.   There were 60 competitors in the Shot Put!

Junior Jonathan Rosenfeld was the top finisher for HP in the 1600 Meter Run.   Despite falling off pace a bit in the 3rd quarter, Rosenfeld kept his focus and ran with tremendous grit and intensity in the final 2 laps of the race to pass several runners.  He finished in 4:43.6 for 9th place.  Senior Joe Pinsky (4:51.1) and sophomore Alec Glazier (4:51.14) ran well in this event and took 12th and 13th place out of 43 runners.

Freshmen Jack Casey had a big day in the High Jump.  Despite jumping on a poor surface, he kept his focus and was able to clear a personal best of 5’4”.  He finished tied for 9th place.  Freshmen Amir Fakhari cleared 5’0” in the event.  This could turn into a really strong 1-2 freshmen punch in the High Jump.

Senior Mark Gilling was the Giants top short sprinter of the day.  He ran 7.09 in the 55 Meter Dash.  His 24.8 in the 200 Meter Dash allowed him to finish in 15th out of 71 sprinters.

The relays were overall sub-par at the meet.  Sophomore Fitz Laurie had a big lead-off leg (2:04.7) for the 4X800 Meter Relay, but the rest of 800’s were not as fast as we were hoping.  The boys will continue to work hard and get in more speed work so that those times will drastically drop in the near future.   The 4X200 Meter Relay members ran solid splits, but most of the handoffs were not good.  That will be practiced and made better.   The final event of the day was the 4X400 Meter Relay and that like the 4X800’s are needing faster splits.   We had 2 relays entered.   Rosenfeld had a tremendous lead-off leg with a personal best 56.6 split.   Junior Josh Drummond, Reyes, and junior Ari Weisenthal all ran tough legs and will continue to drop their times.   The other relay struggled to hit the needed times to stay with the leaders, but Kriozere ran a determined anchor leg to pass a few teams on his way to a 53.9 split.  

The team is moving in the right direction and took some real positives from this invite.   The team also knows a lot of work needs to be done.   The 400 and 800 times have to come down.   The jumps and vault need to perform better.  We can’t have athletes getting no mark or no height.   The short speed guys need to continue to focus on working hard and getting stronger.  Distance has several young guys that are being called upon to step into varsity rolls and are responding well.    Once we get everyone healthy and competing the team will start to come together and find their identity and have more success.   The just need to keep bringing the intensity, enthusiasm, and passion to EVERY practice and meet!