Mather’s cross-country team, 11 individual runners qualify for state

Mather’s Anas Hirsi runs in the meet at River Park. | Kirsten Stickney/For the Sun-Times

Mather senior Alex Bardales was sitting at home Friday night when he got the news he didn’t believe.

“I thought it was a joke,” Bardales said. “Then I told my sister [Maria] to get her stuff and run back to Mather.”

The siblings headed back for an emergency team meeting called by Rangers coach Joe Sullivan after a Cook County judge’s ruling gave Public League runners a lifeline.

Judge Neil H. Cohen on Friday granted an injunction to let Chicago Public Schools teams compete in Saturday’s sectionals even though they missed the Oct. 26 regionals.

On Saturday, Mather’s boys finished fourth in the Class 2A Fenton Sectional to qualify for state for the third straight season. No other CPS team advanced, but individuals from Jones and Taft advanced in 3A, while runners from Payton, Amundsen, Alcott, Northside and Solorio moved on in 2A.

That capped a whirlwind two days for Sullivan and his runners.

Friday was the Rangers’ first practice with full attendance after the Chicago Teachers Union strike was suspended. Sullivan broke the news to his runners that an appeal to the IHSA Board of Directors to allow the CPS runners into sectionals had been denied that morning.

Figuring that was the team’s last hope for state, Sullivan turned his focus to the City State Meet being organized by Mather alum Chris Wilhite for Nov. 7. That was supposed to fill the competitive void for city runners shut out of the state series.

“We decided to run a hard workout,” Sullivan said. “[Then] we had a pizza dinner to take the bad taste out of our mouths and celebrate the season we thought was over.”

Sullivan was driving home later when he got a call from his dad who heard about Cohen’s ruling. He pulled over, confirmed the news on Twitter and called his top seven varsity runners back to the school.

“I got the ice bucket out,” Sullivan said. “I figured they were sore from the workout.”

“I was tired and all,” Bardales said. “But then I heard we would be competing and I got my energy back.”

That carried over to Saturday morning, when sophomores Kevin Gee, Emmanuel Nwatu and Yasir Hirsi and junior Daniel Bekkouche joined Bardales in the Rangers’ top five and Mather advanced.

“I just went nuts,” Bardales said of his reaction when the team scores were announced. “I just have no words to describe it.”

Taft’s Sydney Partyka advanced as an individual from the 3A Lake Park Sectional, finishing 18th after getting barely 12 hours’ notice that her season wasn’t over after all.

“There’s certain rituals I like to do before I prepare for a race, so I was very flustered when I found out we were going to race,” she said.

Flanked by dozens of students, Sydney Partyka, a senior at Taft High School who runs cross-country, speaks during a news conference outside the Daley Center.

Partyka and the other runners at Lake Park battled tough conditions on a soggy course.

“Definitely not my best race,” she said. “I could have done a lot better. It’s difficult, we haven’t been training with our coaches.”

But it beat sitting home while other runners were chasing their state dreams.

Other Public League boys advancing were Jones’ Anthony Maida, Ryan DeSantis and Aaron Hou in 3A; and Alcott’s Tony Delira, Payton’s Zach Rose, Amundsen’s Nelson Gates and Solorio’s Miguel Cordova in 2A.

Also qualifying for state on the girls side were Solorio teammates Kaylani Esteban and Jasmine Reyes, Northside’s Elia Ton-That and Payton’s Josephine Dziedzic in 2A.