EDWARDSVILLE - Edwardsville High's boys cross country team placed three of its runners in the top five, and four in the top ten, as a strategy of having the top five runners pace its second pack of five early in the race paid off in a team win in the 57th running of the Edwardsville Invitational meet Saturday morning at SIU-Edwardsville's Mud Mountain course.
The Tigers won with 38 points, with John Burroughs School of Ladue, Mo., in central St. Louis County, coming in second with 63 points, Francis Howell was third at 80 points, Parkway West was in fourth with 118. Mascoutah was fifth at 128 points, taking sixth place was CBC at 182 points, Ft. Zumwalt West came in seventh at 189 points, Centralia Christ Our Rock Lutheran placed eighth with 249 points, East St. Louis was ninth with 286 points and Alton rounded out the top ten with 307 points.
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Gillespie was 11th with 309 points, Belleville East placed 12th at 331 points, Staunton came in 13th place at 349 points, Collinsville was 14th with 371 points, 15th place went to Metro-East Lutheran with 375 points, Springfield Southeast was 16th with 493 points and Dupo was 17th with 536 points. Maryville Christian and Duchesne Catholic of St. Charles, Mo., also had runners in the field, but not enough to record a team score.
The Tigers performed very well in both the boys and girls meets, especially on their home course, and Edwardsville head coach George Patrylak was very please with how things went on the day.
"This was a very good experience for our kids," Patrylak said. "Obviously, we wanted to have a very good showing, having the opportunity to compete on our home course. But we also wanted to be cautious, because we have two big weeks of racing coming up. The next two weeks. we will face quality competition and many of the teams we'll be facing in the sectionals and/or state."
The strategy of having the top five runners on the team pace the second pack of five runners for the first part of the race worked tremendously for the Tigers and in the case of top runners Ben Perulfi and Hugh Davis, it resulted in some of the faster times of their careers.
"That put our lead group outside of the top ten for the first mile," Patrylak said. "As we proceeded to the second mile, our top four runners were able to move up and have some impact on the team. Although they weren't able to close the gap, both Hugh and Ben were finished at 16:25 and coming in second and third, with times faster than our top Edwardsville runners of the past several years."
Charles Glatz of Burroughs was the individual winner with a time of 16:10.9, with Davis second at 16:25.0 and Perulfi third at 16:25.8. Fourth place went to Brendan Porter of Parkway West at 16:30.0, the Tigers' Colin Thomas was fifth at 16:38.4, in sixth place was Alexander Koneker of Francis Howell, coming in at 16:44.8, CBC's Devon Alexander was seventh at 16:49.2, Edwardsville's Jackson Amick finished eighth at 16:51.2, Gavin Daenegsurisri of the Bombers was ninth at 16:51.3 and rounding out the top ten was Wade Patten of the Longhorns, who came in at 16:52.1.
To go along with the top four runners, Edwardsville saw Taylor Davis have a time of 17:05.5, Colin Luitjohan was in at 17:08.1 and Cooper Wittek was in at 17:12,4. The leading runner for the Flyers was Darius Ivy, who had a time of 17:00.8, with Demarcus Coleman coming in at 19:01.1, Devontae Ellard had a time of 19:03.3, Cortez Sanders was home at 20:10.9, Marcus Debois had a time of 20:45.7, Ladarius Estes came in at 21:06.9 and Tashawn Canada's time was 21:18.2.
Noah Gallivan again led the way for the Redbirds, having a time of 17:22.1, while Hank McClaine was in at 19:07.4, Charlie McAfoos' time was 19:46.0, Devon Yowell had a time of 19:54.2, Brayden Murray was in at 20:20.8, Jaxson Duke had a time of 20:29.5 and Isiah Ouechani was home at 22:06.0. Lucas Abbott led the Knights with a time of 19:07.5, with Wyatt Goeckner in at 19:26.5, Adam Brokemeier had a time of 19:29.9, Jack Shank was in at 20:42.9, Dean Hemmer had a time of 21:45.7, Mark Chernianskii was home at 21:50.4 and Jayden Glasper had a time of 21:55.0. 
DeAndre Brown was the top runner for the Kahoks with a time of 19:14.6, with Chase Cummins in at 19:19.3, Brian Castro's time was 19:49.8, Ben Simpkins had a time of 20:32.0, Anton Beljanski was home at 20:44.0, Will Slaznik had a time of 20:48.6 and Camden Reeves had a time of 22:22.8. Staunton's top runner was Nick Monahan, who was in at 18:57.1, while Rhyse Rucker came home at 19:16.5, Peyton Luketich came in at 19:34.5, Aiden Green's time was 19:35.7, Bryan Podwojski had a time of 21:32.6, Thomas Ogata was in at 22:27.5 and Jaydon Hausman was in at 22:57.0. Noah Jacob was the only runner for the Lions, coming in at 18:18.3.
The Tigers next run in the Palatine Invitational in northwest suburban Chicago next Saturday, then return to Peoria's Detweiler Park to compete in the Peoria High Invitational.Dan Brannan also contributed to this story.
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