Eisenhower celebrates first XC championship in 60+ years

Eisenhower High School varsity boys cross country coach Dr. Jeremy Ceja offers his perspective on the historic achievements of the Cardinals this season.

Eisenhower won its first conference championship in more than 60 years and just missed advancing to sectionals as a team (in a normal season, the top six teams at regionals would advance; this year, due to COVID-19, it's five. Cards took sixth.)

"In normal seasons, the top 6 teams qualify to sectionals, but this year because of covid it was top 5 only; and we finished 6th, beating Stagg and all the SSC Red teams.

"After the top 5 teams [and their runners] are removed, the next 5 individual qualifiers are taken; Jonathan Jacobo finished 3rd but Josiah Sianez finished 6th, so Josiah didn't qualify (for sectionals.) Josiah is a leader, a captain and has been the rock of the team since his sophomore year. He is a 3 time varsity all conference selection and two time sectional qualifier and i was hoping he'd finish his career at sectionals

"Anyway, it has been a long but amazing journey with the 7 current seniors. Three years ago they won JV conference; that was originally going to be my last year coaching XC but i decided to stick around.

"I've never had this many seniors who did it all four years; it's a special group. i told Jeff Vorva (of the Daily Southtown) if any of the seniors decided, during the pandemic months, that if they didn't want to continue for any reason [covid, no guarantee of a season, preferring to make money and work] i wouldn't have blamed them.

"Since this was planned to be my last season coaching cross country, i had planned to take my varsity team to Colorado this summer to do high altitude training, everything was booked, but covid messed up our plans.

"However, the kids still chose to continue business as usual. they could have at any point gotten negative or given up, but they didn't -- they remained optimistic. It's hard to put into words what they mean to me. If its taken 57 years to win a boys conference title here, it must take a special group of athletes to come together to achieve what they did. most groups of seniors are special to me, and they are definitely up there with the best of them."

Coach Ceja will continue to lead the boys track program at Eisenhower.