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Motivational Essay

‘It’s Great Motivation’: Kayla Shea And Monica Skibicki Stick Together As Lockport Rolls To SouthWest Suburban Blue Title

Lockport sophomore Kayla Shea was confident she would be near the front, but she thought a boost from a teammate might be the key to pushing her over the top.

So, before Saturday’s race, she gave a pep talk to fellow sophomore Monica Skibicki.

“Our team likes to pack run,” Shea said. “I told Monica, ‘Let’s stick together today. I know you’re capable of it. We’re going to do this together.’

“Your teammates are the ones who practice with you every day and know how hard you work. When they’re there with you pushing you in these races, it’s great motivation.”

Shea and Skibicki proved to be a great duo, finishing as the top two runners in the combined SouthWest Suburban Conference Meet between the Blue and Red divisions at Lockport.

Shea won the Blue championship in 17 minutes, 31 seconds, with Skibicki right behind in 17:37.4.

The pair helped the Porters win their third straight Blue title with 29 points. Sandburg was second with 48, followed by Lincoln-Way East with 58, Homewood-Flossmoor with 114 and Bolingbrook with 119.

H-F’s Caroline Schoen finished third in 17:43.2.

Lincoln-Way Central senior Merrigan Allen took fourth overall and was the Red champion in 17:50.2. She led the Knights to their second straight Red title with 32 points, 10 ahead of runner-up Lincoln-Way West.

Andrew was third with 87, followed by Stagg with 96 and Bradley-Bourbonnais with 116.

“It feels really nice to win this,” Shea said. “There were so many really great runners to compete against.

“I was so proud of how Monica did, too. It’s so fun to be there when your teammates break their goals.”

Lockport East's Monica Skibicki finishes second in the SouthWest Suburban Blue Meet at Lockport on Saturday, Oct. 17, 2010. (Jon Langham / Daily Southtown)

It was the sixth win of the season for Shea, who improved on a third-place finish in the SWSC Blue Preseason Meet. She set a personal record by 13 seconds.

Skibicki, meanwhile, was ninth in the preseason race and finished second in just one dual this season. She shattered her personal record by over 33 seconds.

“It was honestly amazing,” she said. “Kayla’s always a lot faster than me normally. I was just so determined to keep her in my sight and just make sure I stayed up with her.”

Josephine Bober finished sixth in the Blue for the Porters in 18:19.8, while Megan Mitchell was ninth in 18:26.4 and Elizabeth Bollinger was 11th in 18:32.9.

Allen, meanwhile, won her sixth race of the season, but this one surprised her a bit after she finished fourth in the preseason meet.

Lincoln-Way West’s Gianna Arizzi had won all seven of her races this season and beat Allen by over 16 seconds in the Oct. 6 dual.

This time, Allen topped her crosstown rival by more than 17 seconds. Arizzi was the runner-up in 18:07.8.

“I was honestly not expecting to be first in the Red,” Allen said. “I was a little nervous because I knew everyone was going to be so fast, but I’m really happy with how I raced.”

Homewood-Flossmoor's Caroline Schoen finishes third in the SouthWest Suburban Blue Meet on Saturday, Oct. 17, 2010. (Jon Langham / Daily Southtown)

Stagg’s Karolina Rozanski took third in 18:12.2.

Also for Lincoln-Way Central, Claire Carter finished fourth in 18:30, Catherine Ihrke was fifth in 18:35.2 and Nancy Flais took 10th in 19:14.3.

Allen executed her strategy to perfection.

“I like to start out slow and work my way up,” she said. “I haven’t been able to do that much this year with less runners in races.

“They were telling me I was near the back early in this race, but I didn’t panic. When I start passing people, it encourages me to keep going faster.”

Steve Millar is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.

Hailing From A Family Of Docs, Sainath’s Self-motivation Was Key To His Success

Visakhapatnam: Local boy Vavilapalli Sainath, who topped AP Eamcet engineering stream, hails from a family of doctors. While Sainath’s father V Ramesh is an orthopaedic surgeon, his mother Padmaja is an MD in physiology. Sainath’s parents supported his endeavour to pursue engineering. He had already achieved an JEE Advanced all-India rank of 173 and 17 in the OBC category. Sainath told STOI that he wanted to pursue CSE (Computer Science and Engineering) at IIT-Bombay.A bright student, Sainath has shone in various Olympiad exams and has even got a seat at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He also excelled in various recent entrance tests, including that of the BITS Pilani. Speaking to STOI, his father Dr V Ramesh said, “He is self-motivated. His own interest in academics and guidance from his college helped him get the first rank. We are happy to see him topping the AP Eamcet.” Dr V Ramesh said that Sainath has always been good at mathematics and they encouraged him in that direction. — Umamaheswara Rao

Kurtenbach: More Key Injuries For 49ers — Bad Luck, Bad Management Or Something Else?

The Deets is a weekday morning dose of commentary — delivered at 7 a.M. — from sports columnist Dieter Kurtenbach that wraps up everything important in the world of sports and looks forward to another crazy day ahead.

It’s a cruel game, this bloodsport called football. So much so that success or failure in it is often defined by attrition.

That’s a truth that the 49ers are finding out the hard way this season.

Yes, another week, another round of season-altering injuries for the 49ers.

The Niners have the longest injury list in the NFL. Four of their five best players this season have been sidelined — one, Nick Bosa, will remain out for the rest of the season — and countless injuries behind those top stars have made this a season from hell for the 49ers.

And with 10 games remaining on the schedule, it’s hard to see this trend changing.

Anytime something is taken away without clear motivation, it’s easy to play the blame game. There was a two-week stretch earlier this season when the main topic of conversation around the Niners was artificial turf.

But what about bad luck? Yep, the Niners certainly have plenty of that this season. Is it karmic retribution for 2019? Something else? No one can say, but plenty will try.

Is there something more sinister going on with the 49ers, particularly with the team’s medical staff? It’s fair to wonder, but so far that department is not catching flack from folks inside the organization. (Or maybe they’re not taking their badmouthing public yet.)

Are these kind of injuries simply inevitable? Injuries beget injuries, after all, and with the team reeling from tough blows at the start of the season, part-time players have been elevated to full-time status and are pushing their bodies during games in ways they have not done before.

Raheem Mostert is a prime example of this possible explanation, though it should be noted that no one factor is solely responsible. Mostert was a change-of-pace back for the Niners last year before becoming the team’s de-facto starter roughly halfway through the campaign. He started this year as part of a three-man backfield rotation.

But after coming back from an MCL injury this season, Mostert became the bell-cow back for the Niners. This was evident on Sunday — the Niners were going to go as far as Mostert could carry them.

Mostert carried the ball 17 times Sunday before a high ankle sprain knocked him out of the contest early in the third quarter. Sixteen of his carries came in the first half.

Mostert had only carried the ball more than 16 times in a game twice: last year’s NFC Championship Game (29 carries) and Week 13 last year against the Ravens (19). In both of those games, he kept getting the ball because he was receiving huge running lanes and was barely being touched — he averaged more than 7 yards per carry in both games.

Sunday, he averaged 3.82 yards per carry. A lot of handoffs without many big gains? Being a battering ram is not Mostert’s game — never has been. His body isn’t one that is trained to have the entire team riding on his back.

But that’s the role the Niners had him playing. I’m not saying his injury was inevitable, but given the circumstances, the likelihood of an injury was certainly increased.

In a way, Mostert was sacrificed so the Niners could win a Week 6 game. Might the Niners regret such usage? Sure. But what was the alternative? Sunday was effectively a must-win game for San Francisco and if Mostert wasn’t given the ball early and often, that game would have rested in the hands of quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo.

The Niners were going to fend off such a fate for as long as possible.

That plan barely lasted one half of one football game.

Perhaps the 49ers can disprove the theory that attrition begets more attrition in the NFL. Perhaps the backups to the backups can play well and play often.

But we’re back to where we were at the beginning of the season — a truth that has only become more and more evident through the first third of the season: This team needs Garoppolo to be more than a game manager, because if this roster entered the season depleted compared to 2019, it’s entering 2018 levels of depletion now.

There’s only one way to counter such a fate: Have an elite quarterback.

Of course, Niners head coach Kyle Shanahan will try everything and anything to protect Garoppolo and that tells us everything we need to know about the quarterback.

Meanwhile, rookie running back JaMycal Hasty — who is quite good — will likely be the next sacrifice for the Niners’ ground attack.

He hasn’t carried the ball 20-plus times in a game since high school.

Oh wait, there’s more. For my full breakdown of everything that happened yesterday, previews of what will happen next, and my best bet of the day, subscribe to The Deets to be delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.