For the second week in a row the Du Quoin boys cross country team and junior Landen Swiney in particular finished second in a meet. On Tuesday it was the Sparta Invitational.
"I hope Landen getting beat by two freshmen the past two meets will get him mad," said Du Quoin Coach Eric Kirkpatrick. "As a team we've got a good top three right now with Landen, Jon (Gomes) and Nathan (Smith). All we need now is to get two more guys up there. We still have a lot of work to do, so if we get five runners in the Top 10 that would make us hard to beat."
In the past two weeks the Indians have run into two of the best cross-country programs in the region. Last week Benton beat Du Quoin by 17 points and on Tuesday it was Pinckneyville doing the honors by 18 points.
The Indians were solid in second place beating Nashville by 33 points and Sparta by 54.
"Pinckneyville is a strong program on both the boys and girls side," Kirkpatrick said. "Today the boys had six runners in the Top 10. They had a pretty good day."
For Du Quoin, seven of its nine runners ran season best times with its top six setting the pace. Swiney, who ran 15:52, improved his season best time by almost seven seconds, while being edged out of first place by three seconds by Pinckneyville freshman Issac Teel. Last week it was Benton freshman Gavin Genisio who beat him by almost 28 seconds.
"The spread wasn't quite as bad as last week," Kirkpatrick said. "They ran even for about a mile and a half and even with about a half mile to go they were only separated by a few steps. It was a pretty tight race from wire-to-wire."
Senior Jon Gomes ran a season best 16:50 for the Indians, and was edged out of fourth place by three seconds by Pinckneyville senior Daniel Garavaglia.
The junior Smith finished seventh with a season best time of 17:14. He was edged out of sixth by 1 second by Nashville junior Ray Habeck.
The remaining Top 10 runners were all from Pinckneyville: senior Steven Hirte third (16:26), junior Dylan Bledsoe eighth (17:25), senior David Wagner ninth (17:31) and senior James Robb 10th (17:36).
The next three Du Quoin runners were sophomore Tavion Garrison (18:53), senior David Gomes (18:53) and freshman Conor Gross (19:21), who finished 15th, 16th and 18th respectively, with season best times.
"Conor is still young and getting his legs underneath him, but we're hoping for big things out of him," Kirkpatrick said.
The remainder of the Indians squad were senior Reese Tilley finishing 24th (21:11), junior Hunter Douglas 25th (21:15) and sophomore Waylon Bell 32nd with a season best time of 26:08.
