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The First State Qualifying Team in Almost 20 Years
November 2, 2025
What a beautiful Saturday morning for our girls team to attempt to make history and become only the second girls cross country team in Lisle history to qualify for State. The girls were confident and prepared, but the projections showed it was going to be a close race and anything can happen in the post-season.
Boys Race - Results (Team Results)
While the boys weren’t racing to qualify for State (they were officially ranked 22nd going into the race, but that included some teams that weren’t at the Sectional), they were racing to have a great finish to their season.As a team, the boys finished 12th overall.
Junior Simon Klein had aspirations of making State at the start of the summer, but ultimately it didn’t happen. Simon had a solid season, but never made the jump he needed to get to State. He was Mr. Consistency, though, as he hit his times on the regular in workouts. That showed with his final race at Community Park when he ran the exact same time (18:59) he ran at last week’s Regional while finishing in 45th place. We’ll count this as a season P.R. since it was a fraction of a second faster than last week.
Sophomore Liam Newton really solidified himself as our #2 runner this season and made some huge improvements over the course of the season. Liam ran in four 5Ks this season and ran faster in every single one. His time of 19:34 in 63rd place was a lifetime P.R. for Liam so Liam ended up setting his 3 mile P.R. (18:51 at Conference) and 5K P.R.s in what turned out to be a great season for him.
Freshman Cayden Denhart was one of only two runners who joined cross country but hadn’t run with us over the summer. He started the season at the HCA Fall Classic by immediately running his lifetime 5K P.R. and continued to improve and eventually become our consistent #3 runner behind Simon and Liam. Cayden ended his season like he started it, with another lifetime P.R. as he finished with a time of 21:02 in 93rd place.
Junior Aiden Slehofer had a steady season where he saw himself setting lifetime P.R.s for the three mile at Richard Spring and he finished the season with a lifetime 5K P.R. when he crossed the line in 21:08 in 96th place. Aiden is poised to have a great season in his senior year.
Junior Jimmy Mullen came back to cross country after skipping his sophomore season and ended up setting lifetime three mile and 5K P.R.s. Even with an ailing knee, he was able to set his 5K P.R. of 21:09 at the Sectional, which crushed his P.R. from the previous week by over 40 seconds! Jimmy finished in 97th place right behind Cayden and Aiden and it will be great to see the three of them continue to run as a pack next season.
Freshman Blake Madsen started the summer by running a 10:14 mile in our first time trial (he only ran a mile). He ended the summer running a 28:52 three mile. Blake had a huge time drop for his first meet by running a 24:13 5K at HCA and continued to improve as the season went on. He set his 5K P.R. of 21:53 at the Sectional to cap off a fantastic season while finishing in 108th place.
Junior Lincoln Calfo didn’t have the season he wanted when he finished the Sectional race with a time of 22:45 in 113th, but he was a strong leader for our team as one of our captains and is going to come back stronger next season.
Girls Race - Results (Team Results)
The girls came into the race knowing they had a chance to qualify for State. Four teams (Chicago Christian, HCA, Manteno, and Timothy Christian) were going to be competing for the Sectional championship and there were five teams (Herscher, Johnsburg, Lisle, Paxton-Buckley-Loda, and Richmond-Burton) ranked within nine points of each other for the final two qualifying spots. What was projected to be a close race was anything but as the girls ended up crushing the projections by finishing in 5th place over 6th place Richmond-Burton by 30 points! The girls became the first cross country team at Lisle to qualify for State since the girls' team in 2006. Every single girl on the team did what they could to make this happen. They all had goals of improving their seed by just a bit to help lift the team if anyone had an off race. Luckily, no one was close to having an off race. Junior Dani Erickson lifted the team again with an incredible performance and ended up finishing just three places away from an All-Sectional performance with her 13th-place finish. Dani was seeded 18th and her goal was to finish in the top 15. Dani set a lifetime 5K P.R. last week and did so again this week with her time of 20:30. Freshman Madi Madsen has had a fantastic season and has learned a lot about racing in her short time on the team. Madi and sophomore Jennifer Duban had a goal of finishing in the top 30 and both delivered. Madi finished with a 5K P.R. of 21:16 in 22nd place while Jen finished with a lifetime 5K P.R. of 21:53. Senior Anya Kutkoski had a goal of finishing in the top 45 and was right there for the entire race. Anya finished in 41st place with a lifetime P.R. of 22:18 in her final race at Community Park. This was well ahead of Anya’s seed of 47th. Junior Molly Martin was given a slightly different goal. She was supposed to try sticking with the pack of runners from Willows Academy since they had shown they run as a strong pack and were ahead of Molly in the Regional. Molly took this assignment seriously and scouted out the team’s starting box during warmups and was just behind the team for most of the race. Molly ended up finishing in 75th place just one place behind the last runner from the pack she needed to keep with. Not only that, Molly ran a 5K P.R. for the season with her time of 24:59 and finished 15 places ahead of her seed! Finally, sophomore Rose Helderle wasn’t running for a specific place. Her goal was to run a 5K P.R. this week and then a three-mile P.R. next week at State. After running three minutes faster on the Community Park course last week than she did at Mane Event, this was a tall order. Rose stepped up to the challenge, though, and beat her P.R. from last week by over 20 seconds with a time of 26:54. Now Rose just needs to meet the second part of her goal in Peoria.
Lion of the Meet
With all of the P.R.s and lifetime P.R.s, nearly anyone could have been the Lion of the Meet. Aiden had a breakthrough race with his lifetime P.R. to cap a solid season. Blake made some of the biggest improvements on the team. Liam set a lifetime P.R. and has started to figure out how good of a runner he can be. The entire girls team ran ahead of their seeds and helped each other qualify for State. Our Lion of the meet has to be Rose, though. Rose dropped her Community Park course time by over three minutes last week and then dropped it by another 20 seconds this week to improve her 5K P.R. Not only that, but Rose was cheering on an athlete on another team who was slowing down towards the end of the race. Rose even started running backwards for a short period of time to encourage that runner. This show of sportsmanship, as well as Rose’s huge improvements, is why she is Lion of the Meet.
