Villa Grove sports wrap

By Tony Hooker
How good was the field at the Decatur St. Teresa IHSA class 1A regional meet?  It was so good that the defending  boy’s state champion Monticello Sages, returning nearly their entire roster, could do no better than third at the regional level.  The girls side might have been even tougher, as three of the top ten teams from the 2019 state meet were competing.  So, it was quite an accomplishment for the VGH boys to finish tenth and the girls to finish 11th against such stacked competition 

Girls Cross Country
Emma Buesing ran 44th (21:47), Lilli Montgomery finished 48th (22:20), Kyleigh Price was 62nd (24:10), Hailey Stutz, stepped up to 69th (25:07) and Madison Logan finished 71st (25:37) as the VGH girls finished in 11th place.

Boys Cross Country
Zach Ruwe ran 23rd (17:02), Rowan Denmark-Collins finished 69th (19:24), Daniel Olson took  73rd (19:38), Aidan Ashbrook was 77th (20:03), Lukas Carey ran 81st (20:45), Logan Chapman came up  92nd (21:56), and Austin Zoch raced to a  99th finish. (24:55)

The really good news however, is that the squad is only losing one senior, Daniel Olson, and combined with a strong Junior High contingent, the future looks bright for Coaches Jim Kestner and Jacob Griffith and their harriers as each athlete showed constant improvement, peaking at the right time.