Basking in cross country glory: UIS’ Gloria Esarco surges on women’s team while Blake Jones leads men’s side

University of Illinois Springfield senior Gloria Esarco never tried cross country until setting foot on campus.

Although she flourished in track and field where she garnered an offer from the Prairie Stars, she could only participate on the high school volleyball team during the fall in Wisconsin.

She has enjoyed every bit of the new opportunity, so much that she will gladly accept an extra year of eligibility from the NCAA due to the COVID-19 pandemic and compete in cross country for a fifth season.

“Personally it’s something I didn’t expect to happen but I take it day by day and I’m excited to have this bonus season in cross country and to be able to get back at it next year and really excel even more,” Esarco said. “In a way, it’s a blessing in disguise and you kind of just have to take it one day at a time.”

Esarco has recently emerged as the Stars’ No. 2 runner on the women’s cross country program and certainly impressed UIS coach Tyler Pence this weekend.

Esarco and Co. finished second place in the 6,000-meter Great Lakes Valley Conference East Divisional women’s race on the UIS course Saturday with a score of 45 behind Southern Indiana’s 41.

The UIS men’s team will also compete in the GLVC meet later this month after taking third place in Saturday’s 8,000-meter competition. Lewis won Saturday’s event with a score of 40, followed by Southern Indiana (47), UIS (68), Indy (71) and Missouri St. Louis (155).

UIS junior and Lincoln High School graduate Blake Jones earned first place in 24 minutes 6.30 seconds and won comfortably ahead of the rest of the field.

“He’s incredibly fit right now,” Pence said of Jones. “He’s one of the top runners in this conference, so he definitely had high expectations coming into the season and I think in two weeks he’ll definitely be a favorite to win the conference championship.”

This story appeared in The State Journal-Register on October 10, 2020.

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Petersburg’s Davis named Illinois Ms. Agriculture USA Queen

Jennifer Davis of Petersburg was recently named the 2021 Illinois Ms. Agriculture USA Queen.

Davis is a senior at the University of Illinois Springfield majoring in environmental studies with a minor in biology.

Davis will be competing at the National Miss Agriculture USA Competition to be held in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio in June 2021.

Miss Agriculture USA is a national nonprofit organization that focuses on promoting positive aspects of agriculture featuring queens of all ages who celebrate and educate about all the diverse aspects of agriculture.

Davis’ agricultural interests include animal science and nutrition, water quality issues, renewable energy, pollinator gardens and biotechnology. Davis also has conducted research on Asian carp.

This story appeared in The State Journal-Register on October 11, 2020.

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Illinois Innocence Project at UIS educates public on International Wrongful Conviction Day

Oct. 2 is International Wrongful Conviction Day, and the Illinois Innocence Project at the University of Illinois Springfield is raising awareness for the causes of wrongful conviction.

The Executive Director of the Illinois Innocence Project at UIS, John Hanlon, said members of the organization created a flag display on the campus quad to make a statement.

"It has a very kind of in your face, symbolic representation," Hanlon said.

The flags are more than pieces of fabric. Hanlon said they represent the lives of people who have been wrongfully imprisoned.

According to Hanlon, the black flags represent the 2,662 people who have been exonerated in the United States since 1989, while the blue flags represent the 336 people who have been exonerated in Illinois.

"The flags represent those people, who are breathing, living and moving, and who had to spend years in a box," Hanlon said.

According to the National Registry of Exonerations, the people these flags represent collectively lost nearly 24,000 years of lives.

"We have more people in prison than any other country in the world," Hanlon said. "That's 2.2 million plus. If 4 percent of those people are innocent, that's a lot of people."

A student employee for the Innocence Project at UIS, Taryn Christy, said there are many causes behind wrongful imprisonment.

"I believe somewhere around 70 percent of wrongful incarcerations include some form of eyewitness misidentifications," Christy said. "False confessions are one of the biggest causes of wrongful incarceration. People always think, I would never confess to something I didn't do, but all kinds of circumstances lead people to falsely confess."

This story aired on WAND on October 2, 2020..

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