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Sports
Positive thinking pays off for Beck : Sports : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisPositive thinking pays off for Beck
| Oswego senior wins at Channahon course, boys and girls place second at invite
| by Alex Gasick
| 9/13/2012
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Heading into last Saturday's Joliet Steelman Invite, Oswego senior Caleb Beck had one thought ingrained in his mind: win.
That positive thinking paid off as Beck cruised to a first-place finish, covering the three-mile course in 15:08.
"My goal was simply to come in and win," Beck said. "I wasn't really looking for a particular time. I just wanted to be confident in my ability and come out and win. That's what I did so I'm really happy with it."
Beck made his intentions clear to the rest of the field early on, as he took the lead from the gun. At the one-mile mark, Beck held a 5-meter lead on a group of three Plainfield South runners. By the two-mile mark, Beck had gapped the chase pack by 50 meters.
Beck continued to extend his lead on the last mile, and finished 17 seconds ahead of second place finisher Dan Lathrop of Plainfield South.
Sophomore Peter Johnsrud was the next Oswego runner to cross the finish line, placing seventh with a time of 15:48. Senior Christian Bartell finished 16th (16:28), senior Brandon Ramsey placed 18th (16:30) and senior Nick Couch came in 24th (16:48) to complete the top five scoring runners for Oswego.
Oswego finished second in the 14-team invite with 66 points. Plainfield South placed five runners in the top eight to win the invite with 23 points.
Beck envisions good things on the horizon for him and his teammates.
"Training has been going very well for us," Beck said. "We've been picking up the pace in our repeats and all of our road-runs have been perfectly paced. We keep getting stronger."
In the varsity girls' race, Oswego senior Kelsey Hjorth placed second with a time of 18:11. Olivia Ryan of Fenwick won the individual title with a time of 18:06.
Coming into the race, Hjorth said her strategy was to sit right behind the leaders for the majority of the race and kick past them at the end. Hjorth executed her plan well and sat on Ryan's heels for the first two-miles, but was unable to overtake the Fenwick runner at the end.
Hjorth was at a loss for words.
"I'm not too happy with how I ran," Hjorth said. "I can't even really explain what wrong."
Oswego girls' head coach Eric Simon wasn't concerned.
"It's early, so I thought Kelsey still had a good run," Simon said. "We're in a heavy training load right now so the girls' legs are very tired. We're training to run well in October, and that's when we'll be 100 percent ready."
Senior Ashley Golembeski and junior Teagan Terando backed up Hjorth with top 10 finishes of their own. Golembeski was fourth with a time of 19:07, while Terando crossed the finish line in 10th with a time of 19:48.
Sophomores Kayla Perez (29th, 20:30) and Dana Janusz (34th, 20:38) rounded out the scoring for Oswego.
Oswego finished second out of 15 teams with 79 points. Neuqua Valley won the invite with 47 points.
Simon was pleased with their performance.
"I thought we ran really well," Simon said. "It was a good effort. It's early in the year, and we're training hard, but team-wise, we ran really well. Things are coming together nicely."
Both teams will next compete at the Peoria Notre Dame Invite on Sept. 15 at Detweiller Park.
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