This weekend normally would be the state cross country meet. For runners from around Illinois, this would be the time to gather at Detweiller Park in Peoria to see who the top runners are.
They won’t be running at Detweiller Park this year since the IHSA called off the state meet in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, but while the official state championships are off, the unofficial state championships will be moving ahead.
ShaZam Racing is planning to put on racing at Three Sisters Park near Chillicothe. Like the state meet would be, runners are divided into three divisions, with small-school runners lining up Friday, Division II on Saturday and Division III Sunday.
There also is a grade school series planned, with nearly 1,600 runners altogether lacing up their running shoes.
For the runners who will head out on the course, it may not be the official state meet, but it is a close enough chance to test themselves one last time.
“It’s my last year, my senior-year cross country season,” said Dixon’s Jade Miller, one of the runners signed up for the event. “I just wanted to get in as many races as I could. It’s kind of like a state meet, so I figured I would sign up for it for fun.”
She signed up a couple of months ago, right when it was announced. She finished 25th at Detweiller Park as a sophomore in 2018 and took 15th individually last year when her Duchesses took ninth in Class 2A as a team. She has her eye on 25th or even higher this time around.
“I’m hoping to stay with the chase pack,” she said. “That’s my goal. I’m kind of taking it like the state meet, but I’m also taking it as my last race senior year.”
Ohio’s Brock Loftus, who runs for the Amboy co-op, also announced on Twitter earlier this week that he will run at the event.
ShaZam puts on its own events, such as the Whiskydaddle in Peoria and Detweiller at Dark, as well as providing times and scores for other events.
Adam White said that ShaZam jumped into action even before the IHSA made the formal announcement that there would be no state meet.
“We anticipated the IHSA canning the state meet in some capacity or the entirety of the season,” White said. “Within a week of their formal announcement, we made our announcement that we would be hosting a championship race of our own.”
Since this is a club event, not officially a school event, the organizers could not go through the high school coaches to sign up runners. Athletes and running clubs were able to apply, with MileSplit collecting the data on running splits, which allowed ShaZam to review the statewide rankings and invite the best of the best.
“We had to operate with discretion as far as who was invited,” White said. “Being that this is an unsanctioned event, and the IHSA has shown that they are a more punitive organization than they are a benevolent organization. … We needed to be very mindful of this being regarded as a club event that was happening after the season, meaning we could not contact coaches, and we were going to need to operate this event no different than Foot Locker or Nike regionals.”
White estimates that the race will field 95% of the top runners and teams at the high school level based on those rankings.
“They’ve been busting their butts for years, 52 weeks a year, 365 days a year, for the opportunity to compete on the highest level,” White said, “to test themselves and see where they stand amongst their competition. So the fact that the opportunity to compete on the highest level was stripped from them in the spring with track and field, and then was stripped again from them this fall, we knew that was going to leave these young men and women very hungry.”
The buzz around these events was evident at last week’s sectional races, officially the end of the IHSA cross country calendar for the year, with Miller saying other runners were coming up to her to see if she was making the trip to Chillicothe.
She’ll be there, lining up alongside the best of the best, not having a state medal on the line but having one last chance to compete as a high school cross country runner.
“It will be bittersweet as my last high school cross country race,” Miller said.