4x800m Recap

Thank you everyone for the great feedback! I have a lot of new ideas for what to do now and I hope you enjoy it. If you notice now on the blog I have included a poll to see who will be the first runner of the week. I plan on only including the graduating seniors at this point and I plan on getting to most of the names I listed. For each runner I plan on having an interview with them, highlighting some of their best races, finding out about their training philosophies, and finding about what they are doing after high school. The quality of each of those posts will depend a lot on the runner themselves.

Now on to the 4x8s

AA Boys 4x800m

1. Anville-Cleaona-8:03.25
2 Wyomissing-8:11.91
3. Trinity-8:12.33
4. Lakeview- 8:12.88
5. Northeast Bradford-8:15.10
6. Northern Potter-8:15.32
7. Masterman-8:16.06
8. Southern Columbia-8:16.39

This race was a pretty easy victory for Anville-Cleaona. They had clearly the best team in the field and they dominated from the start. There lead-off leg put them in a good position and from there the continued to slowly pull away from the field. By the time it got to there anchor Shawn Wolfe they had the race all sewn up. He basically cruised to an easy 2:00 split for the win. The interesting part of the race took place behind them.  Between second and eighth was a smaller spread then between first and second. Trinity had a good runner out in front for them with Will Edwards leading them through the pack in first. After that things began to get jumbled as Wyomissing, Lakeview, and Trinity all vied for the second place spot. In the end it went to Wyomissing on a big anchor leg by Andrew Miller. Trinity pulled off a third followed closely by Lakeview. Behind them was the team of Northeast Bradford. They lost a key leg from their team Curt Jewett who went on to be the 800m champion and clearly that hurt him. However, the tough running of Sam Williams and Colton Synder managed to pull them back into 5th which is impressive for a team who lost their best runner. After that Northern Potter, Masterman, and Southern Columbia all finished relatively close showing the depth of the AA Boys 4x800 this year.


AAA Boys 4x800m

1. Bensalem-7:47.82
2. Cumberland Valley-7:53.51
3. Pennsbury-7:54.56
4. Downingtown East- 7:58.63
5. Red Lion-7:59.40
6.Cheltenham-7:59.44
7. State College- 7:59.64
8. Carlisle- 8:01.07

This was one of the most interesting relays of the day as you had several very good teams with extremely strong anchors on the tail end of their relay. Bensalem was clearly one of the strongest relays with Rivera as their lead-off and Francis as their anchor. Rivera had to make sure they were well ahead of Cumberland Valley if they wanted to have a chance of holding off Kunzweiler. When they came through the first leg, the pack was headed by Conner Harriman of Pennsbury. He ran very tough and finished strong to put his team in extremely good position for a medal. I have never really thought of him as a 800 runner, but he proved everyone wrong with his monstrous first leg. The rest of the pack followed closely behind. The second leg of the race was dominated by Kyle Davis of Cheltenham. If I am not mistaken he had one of the fastest splits of the day in that leg. They came through with Bensalem close behind. Pennsbury was also near the front off an excellent split by the sophomore Sam Webb. He doubled back from the 3200m nicely and he shows a lot of promise for years to come. By this point in the race Bensalem, Cheltenham, Downingtown East, and Pennsbury were in the lead with the rest of the teams trailing. Cumberland Valley had fallen off the back of the pack and needed to make up a lot of ground. Alex Coburn ran an insanely fast leg for them pulling them from 9th to about 4th-5th. He ran them back into the race and gave Kunzweiler a chance at the  win. Bensalem did in fact put some time into the rest of the pack as going into the final leg they had a solid lead over the field. On the final leg Kunzweiler didn't have enough speed to catch Francis, who I believe split a 1:51.7 on the anchor. This is a huge split for him definitely proving he is one fo the best 800m runners in the State. Bensalem had a very strong team this year and I think in better weather they would be capable of a 7:40 flat time. Cumberland Valley held on for second holding off Pennsbury and Downingtown East in the process. Red Lion ran very well to grab 5th place as they had slipped under the radar all year running behind Cumberland Valley.  Cheltenham and State College were the last 2 teams under 8 minutes and Carlisle finished behind them. I think it may have been a disappointing day for the State College boys as I feel like they are capable of much more. Hopefully we will see some of these teams at nationals where they will have one more shot to run a super fast time.