Junior Mark Holt and his Lyons Township teammates tried to taste victory at Saturday's Class 3A Lockport Sectional.

Their return to State as a team was still sweet, but a second-place finish came with a much different flavor on a treacherous Dellwood Park course.

"At the start (of the race), mud was flying up. You got it in your eyes. You try to wipe it from your eyes, but you've got it on your gloves, too. You're swallowing mud, too," Holt said. "My toes felt kind of numb from the water. The water was pretty deep. I thought I had stones, something under my toes in my shoes, but I just went completely numb after the first mile so it was pretty wet and just cold."

The Lions (60 points) took second to Neuqua Valley (35) to easily earn the top-five sectional finish necessary for a return to the state meet Saturday at Peoria's Detweiller Park. The Class 3A boys race is at 2 p.m.

Junior Sam Telfer took fourth (16 minutes, 35.62 seconds for 3.1 miles), followed by seniors Mike Moore (8th, 16:52.02) and Robbie Kucera (13th, 16:55.58), Holt (14th , 16:56.25) and seniors Andrew Allabastro (22nd, 17:07.08), Robby Keeler (28th, 17:18,98) and Stu Newstat (44th, 17:40.03).

LT, which finished fifth at State last year, is hoping to do at least the same at State. Neuqua, the 2007 state champs, Loyola and York are favored to contend for the three state trophies.

"We're running our best right now so I think we should expect to do better than last year," LT coach Mike Danner said. "Neuqua's very good. We were ahead of them for probably two miles and then the course was very difficult from 2 to 2 1/2 miles, right when we were probably hurting. In retrospect, we probably went out too hard. We did go for it. We were running to win."

Telfer has high expectations personally after finishing a top-25, all-state 22nd in 2008. He was only beaten Saturday by Sandburg standout Lukas Verzbicas (15:58.16), the state title favorite, and Neuqua Valley's Aaron Beattie (16:18.49) and Downers Grove North's Ben Silver (16:21.80), who were 30th and 17th at state in 2008, respectively.

"I just want to start running with the guys in the front because I haven't had a lot of chances this year. I feel like I have a lot that I haven't shown this season so I'm ready to show it," Telfer said. "We were really going for Neuqua (Saturday). We were close, 30 points. We really want a (state) trophy. It's going to be a stretch, but it's definitely possible." Kucera, Moore and Keeler also ran at State last year. Keeler rejoined the lineup Saturday after his long journey back from an injury culminated with winning the junior varsity title at the conference meet Oct. 17 by six seconds.

Moore is hoping to be part of a strong supporting pack at state after he finally shook an early-season illness.

"I've just felt a little bit of fire in me to keep going. I feel I'm definitely running my best (right now)," Moore said. "I was really happy with our performance (Saturday). We had Allabastro and Holt up there. If they can stay with us (at state), we'll do really well."