Cross country: Moline wins relocated Rock Island Invitational
Moline cross country coach Tauwon Taylor had the best-laid plans to get his runners to Milan’s Camden Park last week, in order to give them a taste of the course they’d run in Saturday’s Rock Island Invitational.
That visit didn’t happen until around 7 a.m. Saturday and only during a prearace walk instead of a training run.
But Moline’s boys team didn’t really need any more familiarity than that, crushing both the course and 11 other teams into submission to win the varsity boys’ competition with 27 points, good for nearly a 50-point win over Bettendorf.
“We had a good week of practice. A great week of practice,” Taylor corrected himself. “We’re still running really high mileage right now, but I thought everyone was fast. If we continue that, plus get (regular top-five runner) Joe Zahn back, it’s going to be good for us.
“We’re ranked something like 13th in the state, but we can’t take anything lightly. We still have to keep on pressing.”
That’s the same mindset Moline senior Jonathan Smith brought to the start of the varsity boys’ race Saturday. Smith burst away from Bettendorf’s Nick Young near the 2-mile mark, going on to win the individual title by nearly 16 seconds in 15 minutes, 43.94 seconds.
“I started pushing it after the (first) mile; in the second mile, we were just rolling, me and Nick. I figured I’d stick with him to the second hill,” Smith said. “If I was there at the top, I figured I could break him down mentally. The last mile was just about widening the gap — widening the gap and breaking away.”
Despite the gap between Smith and Young, Moline had only a 49-second gap between Smith and No. 5 runner Ian Miller, something that should put the Maroons in good standing as the calendar turns over to October and tuning up for the postseason begins in earnest.
“Once we get past Lockport (next weekend), we have fast courses ahead and regionals and sectionals should be good for us,” Taylor said. “We have some good sprinting guys, Jonathan being more a strength runner. That should work to our advantage.”
In the girls’ race, Rock Falls put five runners in the top 20 for the win, and Bettendorf edged Alleman for second despite Pioneer senior Kathleen Hogan pulling away from a pair of Davenport runners — Central’s Rebecca Wilder and Assumption’s Mary Menster — for the individual title.
“The first mile wasn’t too bad, but that second mile — whoa, that was a toughie,” Hogan said of her finish in 19:13.89. “Coming into this I didn’t know a lot of the Iowa girls, and Rock Falls, I didn’t even know they were here. I think that kind of helped me out. I kind of didn’t want to know.
“If you know someone’s there and they have a faster time than you, it psyches you out. So when I went out, I wanted to go out in the lead. I’ve gone out in the lead all year and that’s helped me.”
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