AA Public League Teams Crash the Party: Mora of Payton, Tall of Kenwood, and Medina of Lakeview Advance to State

Oscar Medina (so-left) and Omar Tall (so) of Kenwood flash their smiles after finding out they qualified for the state meet.

Participants in the state meet usually come from the traditional cross county powers from the suburbs. Well, the Public League helped changed that image at last Saturday's class AA Jones Sectional at Niles West. The Public League qualified three individuals to the next Saturday's state class AA meet at Peoria.

Jose Mora of Payton, was the expected qualifier. He won the 3200 meter's at last spring's CPS track championship and finished 6th in the CPS cross country meet two weeks ago. Mora took care of business and qualified by finishing 3rd overall with a time of 15:58.

The other two CPS qualifiers were more of a surprise as Omar Tall of Kenwood and Oscar Medina of Lakeview. Both came into meet with an outside chance of qualifying but on the day that counted, both ran personal records to qualify for the state meet. Omar Tall ran a 16:25 and finished 12th overall. Medina finished 21st overall with a time of 16:34.

Last year, as a freshman Omar Tall told me that he wasn't extremely serious about cross country and ran two mile times in the 13:00's. This year, he said he decided to show up to practice. His hard work paid off as he became Kenwood's first state meet cross country runner in a long time.

Tall, Mora, and Medina will run their first state week, next week. But expect to see more of them in the future as Mora is a junior and Tall and Medina are only sophomores.


The Public League definitely made an impact at Sectionals. To the right is Donte Dangerfield of North Lawndale (sr- 174' 34th place) To the left is Paul Tyler of Illiana Christian.


Griffin Kelly(sr- left)) led Jones College Prep to an 11th place team finish.

Lakeview's Medina after the race:

Comments

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your title is incorrect. Mora is from Payton ;)