Evanston’s girls track team took a couple of strides closer to getting under the Illinois High School Association state-qualifying standards in two relays Saturday in the 91st annual Palatine Relays.
The Wildkits are just one second off those needed times in both the 400- and 800-meter events. Now, head coach Fenny Gunter has to find out who will take those units to another level.
Opportunity is still knocking in those events for the youngest team Gunter has ever coached. Freshmen and sophomores have dominated the ETHS lineup ever since the 2024 outdoor campaign began, and any of them could emerge to nail down relay spots for postseason competition.
Those two relays earned top-four finishes Saturday in extremely windy conditions in Palatine, and junior Stella Davis registered Evanston’s only individual victory – in her “off” event, the 3,200-meter run – as the Wildkits placed fifth in the 11-team field with 47 points.
Barrington repeated as team champion on the girls side in the co-ed meet, piling up 133 points to win the title for the ninth year in a row.
Gunter knows that time is running short for his hopefuls to secure spots on those relays. The Wildkits will compete in the Central Suburban League South division meet on Wednesday at Glenbrook South, with the IHSA sectional set to follow one week later.
Beating the established qualifying times doesn’t automatically guarantee a trip to the state finals. Only a first place sectional finish guarantees to keep the season alive. But once the Kits can get there – in either or both races – that should lessen the pressure on a talented group of sprinters that is eager to establish themselves on the state map, sooner rather than later.
Saturday, the Kit foursome of freshman Bailey Sterling, sophomore Hunter Vandergriff, junior Nyel Rollins and sophomore Kayla Strickland took third in the 400 relay in a season best 50.22 seconds, just off the state cut of 49.34.
In the 800 relay, the Wildkits turned in another season best performance as Vandergriff, Rollins, freshman Francesca Decastro and freshman Honor Michelin were clocked in 1:46.64, good for fourth place. That effort represented a 2-second drop from the squad’s previous best in a race where the qualifying standard is set at 1:45.77.
Gunter knows the best is yet to come, even if it doesn’t happen this year.
“This is really a great group of girls to work with,” said the Evanston coach. “We’ve been trying all year to give every single one of them an opportunity on the relays, and we’re still trying to find out who will fit where. We’ve tried to open doors for as many kids as possible to help them learn how to be competitive at this level.
“We have talked about hitting that qualifying time over the next two weeks. We’ll see what happens. If they don’t make it, they’ve still had a successful year.”
In his decades-long career as head coach, Gunter has built a culture in which it’s not just the four fastest runners who land berths on relay teams. He believes that chemistry is important when you’re making a handoff, and the coach has made a special effort to nurture his first-year runners this spring.
“Of the eight freshmen we have, four of them never ran together before,” he pointed out. “We focused on the relays outdoors to get them together as a group and to help them bond. That’s important for the future. So far I think it’s worked well, and I think the girls appreciate it because there are a lot of unknowns for all of them this year.
“Sometimes we had them running on the JV [junior varsity] side in meets because we want to make sure they have some measure of success. Then, when we can, we moved them over to the varsity side. We wanted to transition them over to varsity competition without spooking them. They’re learning as a group, and I’m very proud of them so far. They’ve got a lot of potential.”
Gunter and his coaching staff might make changes in the lineup going forward and he insisted Saturday that it’s not a concern if those changes occur every week starting with the conference meet and leading right up to the Class 3A state finals.
“We’ve had a few occasions in the past when we’ve changed the lineup at state,” he noted. “We are still experimenting, even though today they were outstanding. I think we’re solid at 1-2-3 spots in both those relays, but we’re still one person away. We don’t know yet who’ll be the one we ask to hold on at the end [anchor].”
Davis, meanwhile, delivered Evanston’s lone individual triumph in a meet where the scoring format combined at least two individuals – sometimes three – per event. She won a 3,200 race, which she really only entered for training purposes, to her delight.
She showed restraint when a trio of York runners tried to kill off the competition in the first half of the race and pulled away to win in 11:06.51. York’s Anna McGrail was next best at 11:10.78.
It marked only the second time Davis has competed in the two-mile outdoors. She’ll likely switch back to the half-mile for the CSL South meet, then will shift her focus to the 1,600 for the sectional, if all goes according to plan.
“I was a little concerned coming in because I was only the No. 6 seed,” Davis said. “The wind was brutal today and I thought the race started out a little slow. But when I started passing them all, that really felt good.
“Whenever I run the two-mile I like to go out super fast, but today I ran even splits and that made it much easier to run.”
Gunter’s shouts from the infield during the race reminded Davis to rein in her competitive instincts and to run smarter than her foes.
“Those other girls tried to kill everybody early for some reason, running into the wind like that, so the best thing for Stella to do was wait to make her move,” he said. “She didn’t panic and she stayed within herself.
“I think this year she’s running a lot more relaxed. She’s stopped looking at whatever the others are doing and is just focused on running her race. Her form is getting better, too. Now she doesn’t over-stride as much as she used to, and that’s helped her times drop.”
The Wildkits also counted a pair of individual third-place performances from Rollins (48.11 in the 300 hurdles) and senior Sarah Polley (10.02 meters in the triple jump) among their meet highlights.
The all-underclass lineup of Ingrid Sylvestre, Magdalena Conforti, Charlie Kingsbury and Kaia Jalakas contributed another third in the 400 shuttle hurdle relay.