CHAMPAIGN — Layton Hall raised two fingers to the sky before pulling one hand down and thumping his chest. He then breathed a somewhat reserved “Let’s go” as his pace slowed to a walk.

Months of pent-up frustration by Hall released in a simple celebration Saturday morning on St. Thomas More’s track.

“My junior year at state I was projected to finish like top five for all of state, and I really did not have a good day,” the Arthur-Lovington-Atwood-Hammond senior said. “It was the worst race of my life on the most important day, and I wanted to come back out and prove that was a fluke and that I’m ready to go and that I can compete with anyone.”

Hall did just that at the Saber Corn Classic, traversing the 3-mile course on STM’s expansive campus in a personal-best 14 minutes, 53.1 seconds to win the boys’ race.

“It felt awesome,” Hall said. “I haven’t raced in like six months. Hard training all the time.”

The Knights were one of 13 programs competing in 2020’s unique version of the Classic, conducted via five races to abide by COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions. Hall and two other ALAH boys raced in the Nos. 1-3 boys’ runners event, which was preceded by the Nos. 1-3 girls race and followed by the Nos. 4-6 girls, Nos. 4-6 boys and No. 7 and alternate runners contests.

“I don’t think it was too bad,” said Hall, who broke 15 minutes for the first time in his life. “I had my teammates supporting me. … It felt good. Felt fairly normal for the most part.”

Hall and Paxton-Buckley-Loda junior Ryder James spoke before the meet and mutually decided to help one another below the 15-minute mark. James finished runner-up in 15:09.7, and Hall decided during the last mile he needed to break away from his friend in order to achieve his goal.

“I could tell Ryder was hurting a little bit,” said Hall, the brother of Illinois distance runner Logan Hall. “But we were still in a pack coming around the pond the second time, and then with about like a little less than a mile to go over there I took it.”

Hall’s closest teammate was Logan Beckmier, who placed fourth 15:43.4. Other locals inside the top 10 were Monticello’s Jackson Grambart (fifth, 15:46.6) and Iroquois West’s Connor Price (eighth, 16:35.3) as Olympia grabbed five of those spots.

In the girls’ competition, Monticello sophomore Mabry Bruhn blitzed the field — in the Nos. 1-3 race and beyond — by running 17:26.1. Nearest to her was junior teammate Rachel Koon, who took second in 18:14.6.

“It felt really good,” Bruhn said. “I’m just really excited that we can all be out running again. It is a different format than we’re used to, but to me and my team, that doesn’t really matter. We’re just happy to be racing again.”

The Sages recorded four of the five fastest times across all girls’ races, with Bruhn and Koon joined by Estella Miller (third, 18:46) and Grace Talbert (fifth, 19:17.8).

“Mabry kind of started off where she left off last year,” Monticello coach Dave Remmert said. “To be honest, I kind of expected she would do that. She and Rachel are our top two. They’re consistently good. They have very different racing styles, but both are such strong runners.”

Remmert described Bruhn as someone who prefers to get out of the gate quickly and Koon as an athlete who takes a slower track to the front of the pack.

Bruhn is glad she gets to use any approach to racing at all, given the current prep cross-country season wasn’t a certainty until an IHSA Board of Directors decision in late July.

“A couple changes I feel like are a given in the current situation that we are in,” Bruhn said, “but they don’t really affect us because we know the course, we know how to run the course and … we adjust accordingly.”

Colin Likas is the preps coordinator at The News-Gazette. He can be reached at clikas@news-gazette.com, or on Twitter at @clikasNG.