Joe Newton’s victory tree, the one his team stands beneath each fall to await the happy totals, had become a weeping willow.
Newton, head bowed, silently stared at the ground. His cross-country runners and their parents, and the throng of York well-wishers who assemble here every first Saturday in November, did likewise.
Wake-like, they added up the numbers. And they added them again.
“Awful high,” said one Duke coach.
Newton would later concur. “When your fifth guy finishes 115th, in a normal year you don’t have much of a chance,” he would say. “It was like a death march.”
Five minutes they waited for the final totals. Ten. Then 20. They knew their number was high. What about Palatine? And then, gulp, team helper Mike Newman came sprinting down the hill.
“We got it!,” Newman shouted.
“Yes. Yes. Yes,” Newton shouted. “Oh my God.”
Yes, York’s boys won their fifth straight Class AA state cross-country title Saturday at Detweiller Park. And yes, Newton collected his 18th career title. And yes, senior Craig Gundlach finished fourth to lead the Duke effort, and junior Srinu Hanumadass, junior Brian Gary and sophomore Jon Hanley took 12th, 24th and 53rd, respectively.
But no, it definitely wasn’t the walk in the park everyone expected.
York’s final score was 137, or 67 points better than runner-up Palatine. Waukegan was third with 207. East Peoria junior Tim Broe beat Peoria Notre Dame senior Adam White for the third time this season to win the individual title in 14 minutes 22 seconds over three miles. Bolingbrook sophomore David Gonzalez took third to become the Chicago area’s best individual finisher. And then came Gundlach, living up to his promise.
Still, he knew his team had not.
“I knew we hadn’t run well,” he said. “And I was afraid. It really didn’t look too bright. But I just had a feeling in the back of my mind we’d won. We were York. We had to have won.”
York’s total tied its second-highest since the state went to two classes in 1976. In 1986, the Dukes won with 155. Saturday, junior Mark Olson, the Dukes’ fifth scorer, was the guy who finished 115th.
“I thought we were dead,” said Newton. “Honestly, I thought we lost. I was so busy trying to find my No. 5 man (Olson) I didn’t pay attention to the other teams. For a while there, I thought he stepped out for a quick lunch.”
In retrospect, what appeared at the finishing chute to be a close team battle really wasn’t. But that’s not the way the Dukes were thinking under that tree. “We scored 15 points in the regional, 28 in the sectional,” said Newton. “But it’s hard to run well three weeks in a row. I think what put us over the top was Brian Wagner (a Duke track star who was killed in a car crash). We ran this for Wagner. He was on our shoulders.
“I thought for the first time ever here we had beaten ourselves. I was panic-stricken. But right now I’m a totally happy man. I said my goal was 20 state titles, but today I feel like upping it to 25.”
