2020 New Prairie Semi-State Preview


Highland Senior Lucas Guerra headlines Semi-State #4 hosted by New Prairie. The future Georgetown Hoya won this race last year, and ran a personal record of 15:30 last week on his way to a regional championship. Guerra won that race by nearly a minute over Crown Point teammates Cole Simmons and Quinton Bock, and shouldn't see much more of a challenge this weekend.

Led by Simmons and Bock, Crown Point does look poised to make it back-to-back team titles in the boys semi-state. Their closest challenger could be a Chesterton team that already has a sectional and a regional championship to their name this season with six runners capable of running under 17:00.

Lake Central also brings a very good team to this semi-state, and has an outside shot at taking the top spot. Expect West Lafayette Harrison to advance with the fourth spot, but behind them it gets unpredictable. Warsaw, LaPorte, Western, West Lafayette, Valparaiso and Munster will all be racing for those last two spots in the state meet.

Lowell's Karina James won Regional #1 by over a minute last week, but will now have to contend with Bailey Ranta of Chesterton and Culver's Lexi Allen. Ranta finished just a few seconds ahead of Allen in the last week, and both will try to keep up with James in this semi-state.

The top ten girls in this race could all be wearing different jerseys, making the girls team competition in this semi-state very tight from top to bottom. With four girls that ran under 20:00 last week, Chesterton comes in as the favorite but not overwhelmingly so. Valparaiso, Lake Central, LaPorte and Seeger are all capable of winning this race, and Wheeler finished just a few points behind Chesterton in last Saturday's regional.

Chesterton might be the only team that is feeling comfortable about making it to the state meet. Harrison, Warsaw, West Lafayette, Culver, Crown Point and Lowell all have teams that could advance, and knock out one of the six teams already mentioned.

Racing will begin at 10:30 Central Time.