By FRED KRONER
Mahomet-Seymour’s boys’ cross-country team played follow-the-leader on Saturday and the outcome was a successful one for the Bulldogs.
With senior Henry McMurry leading the way – and capturing All-State honors after two previous near-misses – M-S brought home the Class 2A state runner-up team trophy at Peoria’s Detweiller Park.
The state-meet performance capped a season where the Mahomet-Seymour team lost to just two Class 2A squads the entire year, including top-ranked state champion Dixon on Saturday.
M-S, which entered the meet ranked second, had a strong supporting cast to go with McMurry, whose personal-best time of 14 minutes, 41.34 seconds tied for the fourth-best 3-mile time ever run by a Bulldog, regardless of course.
McMurry ended 16th in the 235-runner field.
“We all worked hard for it,” McMurry said. “You can’t be disappointed with a state runner-up finish.”
The pre-race strategy, M-S coach Andrew Walmer said, was for the team’s seven individual runners to stay connected.
“A big part was to look for each other in the race,” said Walmer. “Stay close the first mile, then pull and push each other along.”
Former Bulldog Walmer (2017 graduate) mapped out the plan and his squad executed.
The team’s top five runners crossed the 1-mile mark within two seconds of each other.
McMurry and Adam Smigielski covered the first one-third of the state race in 4:49. They were trailed by Auggie Gaudio (4:49.1), Tate Bode (4:49.5) and Tayten Gergen (4:51).
In his fourth year as the M-S head coach, Walmer has changed some of the squad’s preparations.
Rather than be the hard-chargers when the starter’s gun sounds, Walmer said, “this year, we flipped it, start steady, build into it and finish the strongest at the end of the race.
“We want to maintain (the pace) in the second mile and not feel like we’ve expended all of our energy going into the third mile. By the 2-mile mark (at Detweiler), when a lot of guys are hanging on, our guys are able to make big moves and pick guys off.”
The results speak for themselves.
McMurry was 33rd at the mile mark and charged forward to secure his 16th-place finish. Smigielski improved his position by six places over the last 2 miles, ending in 27th.
Tate Bode went from 38th at the mile to a finish of 36th. No Bulldog had a better last mile than Gaudio, who has been slowed by a hip ailment.
He passed 23 runners in the final 1,600 meters and moved from 62nd after 2 miles to 39th as he hit the finish line.
The other M-S scoring runner, Gergen, placed 67th. Among the 28 No. 5 runners on the state qualifying teams, just one finished in front of Gergen.
McMurry, Smigielski (14:48.65) and Bode (15:05.36) all posted career-best times on Saturday. Gaudio (15:07.61) was less than a second off his season best and Gergen was under 2 seconds away from his lifetime best time.
Smigielski’s time was the best-ever run by a sophomore from M-S, regardless of course.
“He is something else,” McMurry said. “He will be the (school’s) best runner ever. I don’t see a world where he doesn’t break the school record (14:31).”
McMurry showed that the third time can indeed be the charmed one.
As an eighth-grader, he wound up 27th at the IESA state finals, two positions away from All-State status. Last year as a junior, his time matched the 25th-best time (run by teammate Gaudio), but in the photo finish, he was placed 26th and was one spot away from All-State laurels.
Walmer said it was easy to tell what McMurry’s senior season meant.
“I saw in his eyes that he wanted it, and he went after it,” Walmer said. “After barely missing it twice, it was rewarding to see him accomplish it his senior year.”
McMurry is now a two-sport All-Stater, In track, last spring, he finished sixth in the 1,600 meters and helped the 3,200-meter relay to a second-place finish. He said it is difficult to think about conserving energy for the latter part of a cross-country race.
“No matter how you run (early), the last mile is always a grind,” he said.
What helped, he said, were the voices of fans, coaches or teammates who yelled out his placement at various stages of the race.
“When I heard people yelling numbers in the 20s, I realized I had to lock in,” McMurry said. “I’m extremely happy.”
Walmer said there is no clear-cut choice as to which distance best suits McMurry.
“He has great range,” Walmer said. “He is probably best at the mile, but he’s no slouch in the 2- and 3-mile.”
McMurry doesn’t have a favorite distance or sport.
“I’m a runner in general,” he said. “I can’t classify myself as either a track or a cross-country runner.”
Though M-S was ranked second throughout the final month of the season, Walmer wasn’t convinced at first of the accuracy of that designation.
“When people said maybe we were the second-best team, there were some moments, we didn’t feel that way,” he said. “It was definitely a bumpy ride.”
What Walmer regarded as, “our first wakeup call,” came at the 74-team Peoria Notre Dame Invitational in September, a meet featuring predominantly Class 3A schools.
One 2A school (Peoria Notre Dame) placed ahead of the Bulldogs, and Walmer said, “That was the first call that we’re not invincible and there’s still a lot of work ahead of us.”
A week later, M-S edged Peoria Notre Dame by two points in the Metamora Invitational, but Walmer considered it, “a hollow victory,” because “they were missing one of their top five runners.
“We didn’t feel we truly beat them.”
By the time the Saturday (Nov. 8) state meet arrived, Walmer said, “I felt good overall,” adding, “the guys were in great spirits and ready to race teams we’d raced sparingly against.
“They seemed excited and confident in the work they’d done. That kept the anxiety level down. I prepare them the best I can, then I have to let them go.”
And, off they went.
Less than 17 minutes after the race began, M-S had secured its fifth state trophy in boys’ cross-country in the past 12 years and the first one since 2017, when the school captured the second of back-to-back state championships (Walmer was the No. 1 runner on the first of those two state-title teams).
“One of my favorite things about coaching is having runners surpass milestones I had when I was there,” Walmer said. “My sophomore group is our largest (with nine runners) and two of them beat my sophomore PR (Smigielski and Gergen).
“That brings me a lot of joy.”
Smigielski’s time bettered the time Mathias Powell ran as a sophomore. Gergen’s time ranks as the fourth-best ever by an M-S sophomore, dropping Walmer to No. 5 on that all-time list. Bode’s time is the 10th-best ever by a junior at M-S.
“Adam had an exceptionally good race,” Walmer said. “If he hadn’t shown up, we would not have gotten a trophy. The 2-3-4 teams were all pretty close (points-wise at 2 miles).”
In its history, M-S has produced 29 All-Staters in boys’ cross-country (some were repeaters). McMurry’s performance lands him in a tie for the 12th-best finish ever by a Bulldog at state.
The other Bulldogs who ran at state were Carter Alderks and Liam Burwell. They were two of four M-S runners who had a quicker third-mile time than a second-mile time.
Dixon’s winning team score was 115 points. M-S totaled 143 points and third-place Deerfield ended with 155 points. Fourth-place Morton collected 169 points.
McMurry and the Bulldogs won’t take an immediate break from running. They will compete on Sunday (Nov. 16) in the Nike Midwest Regional meet in Terre Haute, Ind.
After that, McMurry said, “I’m definitely going to rest.”
As for Walmer, he will savor the second-place state finish and try to avoid looking ahead to 2026. His lineup on Saturday included two seniors (McMurry and Gaudio), one junior (Bode) and four sophomores.
Three other M-S underclassmen (juniors Jackson Koontz and Jack VanHoorn along with freshman Caleb Zulauf) were in the varsity lineup for at least one postseason race this year.
“State will be very competitive, if not more so, next fall,” Walmer predicted.
