Freshmen lead way in SWC tri-meet

Amherst’s Ty Perez and Avon’s Maddie Harrington paced all runners at a meet featuring Amherst, Avon and Avon Lake. Joe Magill has the story.

At a time when the unexpected has come to be expected, it’s fitting that two ninth-graders won the individual titles in a high school cross country meet Aug. 29 at Lorain County Community College.

Since the Southwestern Conference preview meet was canceled this fall due to the pandemic, the conference is having a series of trimeets instead. The meet at LCCC involved the boys and girls teams from Amherst, Avon and Avon Lake (can you say alphabetical?).

With newly-minted 15-year-old Ty Perez leading the way, the Amherst boys scored 32 points to win the meet, followed by Avon with 41 and Avon Lake with 53. On the girls’ side, freshman Maddie Harrington crossed the finish line first to carry twotime defending SWC champion Avon to an easy victory. The Eagles scored 25 points, while Amherst had 46 and Avon Lake had 57.

For Perez, it was a chance to give himself a birthday present. Sure, his teammates sang happy birthday to him after his victory, but that wasn’t quite as meaningful as snagging his second individual title in as many races.

“It makes it really special to be able to do this on my birthday,” Perez said. “It’s fun.”

Earlier in the week, Perez won the Keystone Icebreaker with a time of 16 minutes, 41.8 seconds, with Avon senior Jett Wieber finishing second, 16 seconds behind. On a soggy, soft LCCC course that was actually in pretty good shape considering all the rain that had pelted it in the previous 24 hours, Perez was clocked in 17:20. Wieber was the next to cross the line, 18 seconds later. The freshman took control of the race from the opening gun and never relinquished it.

“I didn’t run as fast as at Keystone,” Perez said, “but I’m not going to make any excuses. I’m just going to keep trying to get better and better.”

Wieber had hoped to give Perez a push at LCCC, but the Comet was so aggressive in the beginning, the hoped-for battle never materialized.

“That (start) was exactly what I expected,” Wieber said. “He’s got good endurance and good speed. When he went out hard, I knew that was what he was going to do, and I was going to try to stick with him. But as the race developed, I guess I kind of let him get ahead of me. I’m not even sure when it happened. It was kind of gradual, but I have to be more aware. I got too comfortable.”

Last year, Amherst finished fifth in the SWC, well behind champion Avon Lake. But with Perez and fellow-freshman Luke Bowlsby at the front — Bowlsby finished third in both early-season races — the Comets are looking for bigger and better things this year.

At the Keystone meet, Amherst finished in third, 11 points behind champion Avon. This time, the two freshmen again finished up front, but Cael Walker (6th, 18:17), Jacob Raesler (10th, 18:33) and Sebastian Pecora (12th, 18:47) all ran what coach Rob Glatz called “amazing races.”

“The word of the week this week was reflect,” Glatz said. “We wanted to reflect on our summer training, on our race (at Keystone) and on how we could come out and adjust ourselves so we could come out here and have our best effort. I couldn’t be more proud of the boys, because not only did they reflect, but they executed.”

Avon coach Matt Nortz was upbeat after the race. He credited Amherst’s 3-4-5 runners for the Comets’ improved finish, and said the result was fitting considering that the Eagles have focused mostly on endurance so far and were just transitioning into more speed-oriented work.

“We haven’t worked a lot on speed so far,” Nortz said. “We’re moving into our new phase right now and we’re going to be working more on speed. We feel that’s going to help our kids toward the end of the season. We’re confident that it’s going to turn around and we’ll get better.”

Avon Lake, which was led by Matt Henry’s fourthplace finish, appeared rusty in its first race of the season. The Shoremen are the defending champions in the SWC and return four runners from last year’s regional-qualifying team. However, coach Rob Juergens said he was not happy with the summer training of several of his runners, which was apparent in this season-opening race.

“We had a lot of guys who were intimidated because they haven’t raced since last October,” he said. “But with that being said, we did not run as a team today. We had a couple guys do all right, but as a team, we shouldn’t be that far behind. I wasn’t expecting to win, and I knew we could be third, but for a tri-meet, we really weren’t that close.”

Just as Perez did in the boys race, Harrington took off at the opening gun and never trailed, finishing in 21:29. With the freshman leading the way, the Eagles had five of the first eight finishers to claim their first victory of the season.

“It was good to see that they were able to pack up in the front,” Nortz said. “It’s a small race, so that is able to happen a little easier. It was a good start. I think we have a lot more in us. We’re just looking for improvement from week to week.”

Ironically, before the race, Harrington had no designs whatsoever on running in the front by herself. Instead, the plan was to run with teammate Meadow Smith, which she did at Keystone in helping Avon to a second-place finish behind Olmsted Falls.

“I didn’t get a PR, but I said in the beginning if I didn’t get a PR it would be OK because I wasn’t feeling good today,” Harrington said. “But when I started, I just took off and I felt really good. I won the race, and now I feel awesome.”

Smith finished in fourth place, followed by Liz White in fifth, Savannah Reed in seventh and Anna Argabright in eighth.

It was the first race of the season for both Amherst and Avon Lake. Led by Kaylee Haff’s secondplace finish in 21:55, the Comets had four finishers in the top 10.

“It’s our first meet,” coach Terry Kemp said. “It’s been so long since the kids have been able to race. Your hope is to get stronger and get better each week. This is our place to start. From here we see the things we’ve got to work on, and hopefully we’re able to put all those pieces together as the season goes on.”

Avon Lake was missing two of its top runners, which resulted in a huge gap of more than 2 minutes between the team’s first finisher and the rest of the squad. The team placed second in the SWC last year and returns much of that team.

“We had a couple girls who didn’t run,” Juergens said. “We had a few do all right, but our group is definitely not where it should be. We’ve got our work cut out for us. We just have to get healthy and start working hard. It’s that time of year.”