Phillips, Lady Indians keep cross-country streak going

Olivia Phillips raced to her fifth straight win and the Lady Indians won their fourth straight meet, both by wide margins Monday at the Carterville Cross Country Invitational.

"It was a little tougher today," Phillips said. "The wind definitely tired me out and the grass was kind of tall, so it was really hard to sometimes pick up my legs. But I just told myself you have to keep going and not give up."

For the second time this season the Lady Indians took the first four places: Phillips first, junior Lauren Heape second (20:18), senior Jacqueline Crain third (20:40) and junior Alexis George fourth - beating her previous season best time by four seconds with a time of 20:45.

Phillips, who was running her first true three-mile race this season, finished with a time of 19:43 compared to 21:01.6 and 19:59.8 at the two races held on Du Quoin's 2.94 mile home course, 19:10 and 19:30 on Sparta's 2.90 course and 19:40.26 on Benton's 2.92 course.

"I actually did pretty well," Phillips said. "The last time I ran 19:59 and I ran a 19:43 this time. It's a different course, but I'm still PRing (hitting her personal record), so I'm happy.

Phillips said she felt herself letting up after the second mile.

"I immediately caught myself off-guard and it was like 'OK, you need to speed back up again, you got a little rest'."

Phillips said shat helped her was the last 300 meters on the track. "I'm a 400 runner during track season, so this is old hat for me," she said. "As soon as I hit the 100-yard mark I sped up quite a bit."

While the boys needed to wait until the 24th finisher to find out if they won their meet the girls race was over as soon as George entered the chute; leaving the Lady Indians with 10 points compared to second place Nashville that had 32 points after their first four runners finished.

Du Quoin won the meet by 40 points over Nashville, 18-58, with Anna-Jonesboro third (95), Carterville fourth (101), Murphysboro fifth (103) and Herrin sixth (143).

"Everybody got out really fast and I had to chase down a couple people, but I wasn't really concerned about it," Phillips said. "I just had to run my race, so I just kind of waited letting them run out of gas.

"Right before we went on the first turn I was in first again. Actually Lauren was right behind and stuck with me for a while. I then saw us coming in 1-2-3-4 and that was fantastic."

Freshman Kallie Oestreicher finished eighth with a time of 21:38 tying her season best time set last week at Sparta. She was followed by juniors Maddie Decker in 10th (21:45) and Grace Alongi 13th (22:31).

"This is the first time Kallie finished in the Top 10 in one of the longer races, so I'm super proud of her and she seemed really proud with herself," Phillips said. "Maddie came in 10th giving us six in the Top 10. That was fantastic.

"We did great. I knew that we were solid as soon as I saw the first four come into the chute. We're such a strong team that once our four come in it's coming pretty quick before our next three, four or five come in."

The Lady Indians are heading into an eight-day break from competition, returning to action next Wednesday at the West Frankfort Invitational.