Cross Country: Johnson, Seldal step up against Sandwich

Lady Hub junior places second in girls race, Hub senior runs season-best time

Russell Hodges
Posted 9/22/20

Despite missing a few of their top runners, Rochelle Township High School’s cross country teams performed valiantly against a strong Sandwich program at Silver Spring State Park on Tuesday.

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Cross Country: Johnson, Seldal step up against Sandwich

Lady Hub junior places second in girls race, Hub senior runs season-best time

Posted

YORKVILLE — Despite missing a few of their top runners, Rochelle Township High School’s cross country teams performed valiantly against a strong Sandwich program at Silver Spring State Park on Tuesday. The Hubs (4-5, 1-4 Interstate 8) fell to the Indians 15-50, while the Lady Hubs (3-5, 1-4 Interstate 8) dropped their race by a score of 19-37.

“It was a great day to be out there running,” head coach Mark Zilis said. “We ran at a place we’ve never seen before and we knew going into the meet that Sandwich had both a tough boys team and a tough girls team… Unfortunately, we were missing two of our top five runners, and we’re hoping to have those runners back for our meet next week.”

Junior Sara Johnson ran the strongest race for Rochelle, rallying late for a second-place finish with a time of 21:55. Sophomores Ahtziri Zepeda and Karina Lopez clocked in at 24:21 and 24:50, respectively, to take eighth and ninth place in the varsity girls race. Senior Aiden Seldal bounced back from an ankle injury to lead the Rochelle boys on Tuesday, placing ninth overall with a time of 19:11 while sophomore David Wanner finished 10th with a time of 19:25.

“Sara came through for us,” Zilis said. “She was in third place for over half of the race, but she zoned in and wound up passing the second-place girl and beating her by 18 seconds… Aiden had a really good performance and he recorded his best time of the year. David wasn’t too far behind, and our stud freshman Parker [Lenkaitis] nearly broke the 20-minute mark.”

Rochelle will race against Morris on the road next Tuesday at 4:30 p.m.