Senior Connor Madell and junior Vince Zona said team-bonding trips might be responsible for the success of Lyons’ boys cross country team.
Lyons will be the favorite at the West Suburban Silver meet Saturday in Glen Ellyn and has a good chance of winning a trophy at the Class 3A state meet Nov. 7 in Peoria.
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The winning formula started coming together in early August when coach Mike Danner took nearly 30 runners from the program for a three-day trip to a camp in Oregon, just south of Rockford.
“We’d stay in a cabin and run the trails,” Zona said. “As a team, we got closer doing some pretty long runs on a Saturday.”
The trip was more business than pleasure, although teammates played baseball and basketball games against each other, but there wasn’t time for campfires or S’mores. When the Lions weren’t running, Danner held group meetings where each runner discussed individual and team goals for the season and watched videos of past races.
One activity was watching “The Long Green Line,” the 2008 documentary about legendary York coach Joe Newton and the Dukes’ 2005 season.
“It let everyone experience the L-T-X-C atmosphere,” Madell said. “It was good training. There was running and team bonding. We got to know each other really well.”
It’s hard to dispute the results. Lyons won the First to the Finish Invitational Sept. 12 in Peoria and placed second to Sandburg in both the Lyons Invitational Sept. 5 and the Peoria Central Invitational Oct. 3. Sandburg is the top-ranked team in the country, according to MileSplit, and is favored to win the state meet.
Lyons has expectations of winning a trophy for the third time in four years.
That is just about the time when Danner began taking the team on preseason trips. During Lyons’ fourth-place season in 2013, 10 runners went to a camp in Wisconsin. The following year, 30 Lions of all ages traveled to Oregon before placing third that fall.
Lyons runners sleep in bunk beds in a couple of cabins and eat team meals at a separate facility with a cafeteria.
“It definitely brought the team together. It was a lot of fun as a whole. It should be a new tradition,” Zona said.
Star-studded finish
In a preview of the West Suburban Silver meet on Saturday, Oct. 17, York sophomore Charlie Kern Jr. pulled ahead of Zona to win a conference triangular with Proviso West on Oct. 8 at Lyons. Kern, Zona and Hinsdale Central junior Blake Evertsen project to be the top three at the conference meet.
“I was hoping I could take him down at the finish. That was my only meeting (so far) against Kern,” said Zona, a Western Springs resident. “Today he sat back on me and he outkicked me at the end.”
Zona, who was a state qualifier in the 1,600-meter run last spring in track, also ran with Madell on the state runner-up 3,200 relay that placed behind Sandburg.
This fall Zona won the Lyons Invitational and was third in both races in Peoria while emerging as the cross country team’s top runner.
“That loss to Sandburg motivated me,” Zona said. “After that, this summer gave me an extra push. This summer, all the guys got on board.”
Twitter @geomwilcox