Posted Friday, May 26, 2006, The OG, sports

The 3,200-meter relay team of seniors Cameron Cropek and Kangway Chuang, freshman Malcolm Taylor, and sophomore Austin Rundus ran the 10th-best time in this morning's preliminary heats, good enough to advance to Saturday's Class A title race.

The Illineks' time of 8 minutes, 14.30 seconds was a team record — 1.44 seconds faster than their previous best, 8:15.74 in last week's championship performance at the Tolono (Unity) sectional.

Thirty-three teams competed in today's 4x800 preliminary heats. The 12 fastest teams advanced to Saturday's title race. The Illineks entered the prelims with the fifth-fastest sectional time.

Saturday's race is scheduled to begin at 12:15 p.m. at Eastern Illinois University's O'Brien Stadium in Charleston.

Here are the 12 teams that qualified for the finals, ranked according to their IHSA prelim times:

1. Monticello, 7:59.08 (heat 3), Andrew Colbert (sr), Keith Butler (sr), Brent Rhodes (so), Scott Phelps (sr)

2. Oregon, 8:07.39 (heat 1), Tony Portugal (sr), Scott Hallock (sr), Eric Axelson (sr), Eli Hoffman (sr)

3. Tremont, 8:07.73 (heat 1), Carl Pflederer (sr), Jeremy Pflederer (so), Parker Thompson (fr), Jerad Koch (sr)

4. Princeton, 8:09.31 (heat 1), Jared Jaggers (sr), Hunter Mickow (so), Patrick Gonigam (sr), Sam McCauley (sr)

5. Sparta, 8:09.36 (heat 3), Greg McBride (sr), Patrick Adams (sr), Lee Peck (jr), Jeff Baird (sr)

6. Stanford (Olympia), 8:10.06 (heat 1), Jason Springer (sr), Jesse Springer (jr), Shane Harrison (jr), John Neisler (sr)

7. Newton, 8:10.07 (heat 2), Adam Schafer (jr), Corey Hahn (so), Blake Wolf (sr), Clay Britton (jr)

8. Rochester, 8:10.23 (heat 3), Tyler Walker (so), Jon Damery (sr), Jacob Cullen (fr), Jordan Cullen (jr)

9. Herscher, 8:11.69 (heat 2), Bryan Howard (sr), Jonah Vaughn (sr), Kyle Gray (sr), Matt Sommer (sr)

10. UNI HIGH, 8:14.30 (heat 2), Cameron Cropek (sr), Kangway Chuang (sr), Malcolm Taylor (fr), Austin Rundus (so)

11. Byron, 8:14.78 (heat 2), Alaa Atieh (sr), Cole Dixson (sr), Jeff Coltman (fr), Nick Smith (jr)

12. Chester, 8:15.98 (heat 1), Chris Kern (so), Matt Rucker (sr), Ben Korscog (sr), Tyler Search (sr)

— Gargoyle staff

Note: Senior editor Sam Smyth took the photos below at today's prelims. Uni runners have the winged insignia on their uniforms.