Nitz ends meet strong for championship

HUNTLEY — Tommy Nitz continued his strong start to the cross country season as he won the Lake Park boys three-mile meet Sept. 9.

Nitz, a junior and defending Fox Valley Conference meet champion, won first place by three seconds, with a time of 14:52.1. The achievement followed two second-place efforts from Nitz.

“Tommy’s start to the season has been going as expected,” Kaplan said, “We set plans for week to week and he’s been executing them very well. Lake Park is a quality meet and where we do plan to compete for the sectional meet so we do talk about this meet is our dress rehearsal for that future meet.”

The boys’ results also included a top-15 finish by senior Zach Zuzzio, with a 12th-place time of 13:55.3. Andrew Raistrick was 37^th, 16:28.1; Brandon Thompson, 41^st, 16:31.8; Logan Barreto 60^th, 16:57.8 and Nathan Sauber, 16:58.3. The Huntley boys were fourth overall with 151 points.

The course in Roselle has been the site of previous post-season meets.

“It definitely can help competing at post season courses during the regular season weeks so everyone has run the course already and you can just focus on racing instead of questions of a course route,” Kaplan said.

Girls results

Freshman Haley Rahman and senior Ava Allison turned in 26^th and 27th-place efforts, respectively, with times of 18:30.1 and 18:51.5. Morgan Sauber was next, in 39^th, 18:58.1; Corrine Klivinger, 52^nd, 19:28.2 and Aspen Maldonado, 53^rd, 19:31.5. The girls ended in sixth place with 195 points.

“Girls varsity ran against a handful of the top teams in Illinois on Saturday,” coach Kaplan said. “They got sixth overall and just missed fifth by five points. They all ran new personal bests on this Lake Park course so we’re happy with their efforts moving forward. Our top 5 girls had a spread of only 60 seconds which is very good and will help them moving forward if they can keep to that spread or better.”

Huntley’s squads will travel to Minooka for a flight meet Sept. 16.