Schier delight: Sophomore leads Hawks to s

AURORA – Between the mud, wind and biting cold, there was a lot of grumbling from runners, coaches and fans alike Saturday at the Class 1A Aurora Christian cross country sectional.

Not a peep was uttered, however, by Oregon sophomore Jeneen Schier. In fact, she actually prefers those kind of conditions.

“I do best when it’s muddy and wet and not nice out,” Schier said. “I don’t know why, but I always do better in these kind of conditions. When I saw the way it was outside, I was happy.”

Schier traversed the treacherous Oakhurst Forest Preserve course in 18 minutes, 58.4 seconds, good for seventh place in a field of 150 runners. She led the Hawks to a second-place finish with 117 points, behind just Winnebago, which had 88.

The Indians, Hawks, Aurora Christian (157), Rockford Lutheran (177) and Byron (189) punched their tickets to next Saturday’s state meet at Detweiller Park in Peoria.

“For regionals, we knew we had a chance of winning, and we won regionals,” Oregon senior Lynea Axelson said. “For sectional, we’re like, ‘Hey, I think we might actually have a chance of getting runner-up.’ I told everyone, ‘Guys, we’ve been working toward this and we’ve got a chance,’ and we got it.”

Schier and Axelson were joined in the top 10 by teammate Ashley Nordman, 10th in 19:14. Rounding out Oregon’s top five were Shelby Hunter (40th, 20:39) and Jenn Rogers (68th, 21:16).

Rock Falls finished eighth as a team with 202 points. A trio of Rockets were bunched together across the finish line in sophomore Savanah Davis (19th, 19:49) and freshmen Aubree Johnson (20th, 19:53) and Lindsey Crow (21st, 19:54).

The final individual qualifier was Princeton’s C.J. Rhodes, 16th in 19:41. Davis was disappointed not to advance to state.

“I slipped a couple of times, but other than that, I did fine,” Davis said. “I just needed to run a little faster. The good thing is I’m only a sophomore, so I’m going to come back here next year, do my best, and hopefully go to state.”

Erie-Prophetstown (390 points) and Newman (431) also ran as teams and finished 16th and 19th.