Weekend Results 9-20-14

I'd like to start off by saying that I can no longer log into PennTrack. I'm not sure if I was banned, but I made a fairly long Foundation preview on Thursday evening and it was deleted, along with my other posts the next morning. I'm not sure if I was banned and why that may have happened, but it's just a heads of for all of you that I no longer have access to stats.

Moving on -- I think it’s only fair that we start with the biggest meet of the weekend with the most shocking results:

 8^th PIAA Foundation - Paul Power (15:50) -- 4th Fastest Hershey All-Time! O'Hara takes down NA

Gold Race: Paul Power. Honestly I really don’t have the words, but I will try to find them in a brief free-write. Power’s 15:50 clocking absolutely destroys anything that has been done in previous years and it makes him the 4th fastest runner All-Time on the Hershey Course behind Tony Russell, (15:45 and 15:49), Brad Miles (15:47), and Rad Gunzenhauser (15:49). He went out in 7:38 behind James and Brophy to bring down the hammer the second half of this race to take down Kevin James by 4 seconds. James follows up a tough defeat at Briarwood by showing his great hill running ability at the state meet with a second place finish of 15:54, which ties the times of Molino and Abert from last season along with other runners like Zach Hebda (2011). This defeats Jake Brophy by 7 second who ran 16:01, which is no slouch effort either. Power has to be AT LEAST ranked 3^rd in the state right now. James and Brophy are both coming off of a fairly tough course at Briarwood, but this is Power’s opening invitational. He jumped into a big role last season, and did not show too much on the track, but clearly Power is at his best on the XC course and at longer distances. Behind this stud filled top 3 was McGoey and Wharrey who ran together once again going out in 7:44 through 2.5k and finishing in 16:17 and 16:21 a piece. These two are putting up some really great numbers and will be looking for top 10 finishes at the state meet come November. As we’ll get to later, their squad has a lot of work to do.

Ryan James also had a phenomenal race. To give some perspective his brother, Kevin, ran 16:34 here as a sophomore and Ryan just ran 16:29. He’s made some big jumps this season, and I believe they will keep coming. He’s looking to be a lock as a sophomore medalist out of the AAA scene. Another season opener was from Perlman who looked very strong in 16:30, but placed 7^th in a packed field. Behind them, from PA, was Ian Baun who took it out hard, just 3 seconds behind the NA boys, but faded a bit to 9^th place in 16:38. It’s still a fantastic effort from Baun who has had a really great start to his season. He’s running fearlessly and coming up big. And so is Sean Weidner of LD who went out with him and faded as well to a 16:41 time, which is also very strong.

Seel had a solid race, but it still seems like he’s missing Seamus Love. Diestelow had a nice bounceback race, which is great to see. The St. Joes guys Piscano and Fisher have been very solid two weeks in a row and honestly looked better on the hills of Hershey than the flats of Bulldog, so good for them. Milligan continues to mix it up as well, but clearly not looking as strong as he opened his season. 

Now, let’s get to some team results: Cardinal O’Hara, despite a still recovering race from Pastore in 17:37 for 40^th place, take down NA by 5 points! I knew I should have called that. Everyone is really big on NA this season, but I’m not sure why. They lost a huge runner in Seamus Love and their 4-5 runners have no developed yet this season. They might be able to make some big leaps, but realistically they’ve got a ways to go in terms of beating O’Hara, and here’s why: a) O’Hara has a solid 3-4 combo with Rob Morro and Drew Pastore. Pastore has proven to us in the past, like last year’s State meet where he finished 65^th in 17:06 (ahead of runners like Baun, Linderman, and Piscano and right behind Milligan and Diestelow). He clearly can get back to where he was, and is doing it now. He was O’Hara’s 7^th man last meet and was their 4^th guy this week by 20 seconds. B) O’Hara only has to worry about the development of a 5^th man. They’ve got Donovan and Nolen (who has been on some big time relays), along with the 3^rd James, a young man named Patrick. It’s pretty cool that they keep coming, and he just ran 18 flat, which is 6 seconds away from being on their varsity team. Look for him to be a step up 5^th man or Nolen who knows big meets well. C) NA usually starts out really strong. We almost always see these guys get out really well, especially at Foundation. The fact that nobody has stepped up, like Wharrey did at the start of last season, yet really does put them in a tough place.

Now, does this mean NA is bad by any means? Of course not. They’ve two top 15 runners in the state on their side and a very solid 3^rd man in Scott Seel. Right now, out of AAA teams they’ve 2^nd, but they better watch out, because Mount Lebanon looks great: They finished just 5 points behind NA. I think this is a great conversation: Will NA maintain their 8 straight WPIAL titles? Ian Baun is looking like a great front man and Todd Gunzenhauser is slowly moving his way up. The two of them at the end of the season will hopefully be running together (preferably Gunzenhauser catching up). Plus they’ve got varsity guys who have been there before in Harris and Stone. The pack looks great, plus this kid Bryce Brandenstein who is a freshman just ran 17:32!!! Kevin James ran 17:24 as a freshman on an O’Hara team that looks very similar to Mt. Lebo. I’m very excited about these guys.

Some solid results from CBE whose top 4 consists of only juniors… which could be a good story line next season along with LD who had made a great recovery with 3 sophomores in their top 5. Shean and Cassel are killing it. State College looked great to open the season, but not so much at this meet. I remember this happened last season and they came on very strong late in the season so I’m not worried about them at all. 

Blue: Hockenbury gets a big win, which is no surprise. He went out in 7:39 (right behind the leaders of the Gold race) and slowed for a 16:10 mark. With 3 runners to push him, I really wonder where he would have finished. This is a big result for him, but he seems to run better by himself, which is odd. Either way, he is by far and away the top dog of AA right now. Next was Brady Wilt who started off very strong with a second place finish in 16:43. I thought the Grove City boys would be the best 1-2 punch in AA, but Budnik (9^th) and Benka (12^th) were out done by the York Suburban kids. Wilt has found himself a great training partner in Donovan Mears who had made a big jump thus far during his junior campaign. Mears finished 4^th overall in 16:48. The combined 6 points along with a 20^th place finish from freshman Bryce Ohl (17:33!) helped lead them to victory. With a freshman as a #3 and a sophomore in Peter Wagner as a 4^th man I really like what this team has to offer. 

Guys like Nathan Morgan (6^th in 16:52) and Nate Bartos (8^th – 17:05) opened up their seasons pretty well, and Budnik had a bounce back race to beat Benka. Budnik really seems to excel at Hershey, which is rare to say. Noah Smith continues to look strong with a 5^th place finish and after losing a lot of seniors Derek Lopez of Pottsgrove looked good with a 10^th place finish.

White: I’m very impressed with the shape the Degroot-Lutzner is in for Masterman. He took the win in 16:38, which puts him easily in the Top 50 List after just missing last week. He’ll be looking for a top 5 finish at states and his time is 22 seconds faster than he ran last November. Colten Trimble looks pretty solid from South Side and I also like Murray out of Dunmore. VA’s Andrew Koryak comes from a long line of solid runners and should do some damage later in the season, but he started off nicely with a 4^th place finish.

Avonworth took an easy victory with a nice top 3 pack placing 11^th, 12^th, and 15^th all just under 18 minutes. I don’t know how well they look against the rest of the state A teams to be honest. I’ll do some more research on this tomorrow.

Adidas XC Challenge -- Dahl under 15:30!

Only 1 team traveled down to North Carolina this weekend and that was Germantown Friends, and oh boy did they show up. Nick Dahl broke the 17 minute barrier for the first time this weekend. He also broke the 16 minute barrier for the first time. Oh what’s that, he also broke 15:30 for the first time as well setting a course record for sophomores in a 15:29.7 effort that put him in 4^th place? Yes, that did happen. Welcome to XC Nick Dahl. The winner, Philip Hall, ran 15:12 for the win and ran 15:47 as a sophomore here… to be explicit about it, in case you didn’t read all of my other posts on Dahl, Dahl has a ton of potential and is looking like a monster. So glad we got to see him over 5000m. It’s a shame it wasn’t against other PA guys, but Hall is a 9:03 kid, while Christ and Brown both have 3200m PR’s of 9:28 (~11 seconds behind Dahl). He is still getting used to XC, and I think we’ll see even bigger drops this season from him. 

Teammate Grayson Hepp ran 15:54 to start off his 5k season pretty well with a 22^nd place finish. Behind those two however GTF had a fairly tough day placing 8^th overall with a total time of 16:25 (Places: 4, 19, 84,101, 112). 

Altoona Mt. Lion XC Invitational -- Foust revenge on Kachman

Altoona dominated their invitational with Brad Foust coming up with a BIG win in 16:20 to take down William Kachman who ran 16:43. Kachman has been beating his teammate Zane Baker by 40 seconds+ every invitational, but didn’t look nearly as good this weekend. I’m not sure what’s up with that, but it’s good to see Foust doing well again. Dominic Stroh is nowhere to be found, but Jerrod Sunderland has continued to make huge strides this season in terms of racing. This is his second place finish to Foust this season. If Stroh can get back in form, this team will challenge State College for the District 6 title.

62^nd Annual George School Invitational -- Szuhaj gets the best of Arita

We saw a rare meeting between two of my favorite runners in Brian Arita and Ben Szuhaj. They ran together till 800m to go when Arita surged and took a wrong turn, which lost him both the lead an momentum. Szuhaj got the win in 16:11, which ended up being 5 seconds ahead of Arita. Glad to see Szuhaj back in action. The independent league is starting to get really strong, which is great to see. Behind them there wasn’t anything big. CRN got their first team invitational win of the season over a fairly weak field, but they’re starting to look better. Freshman Ethan Koza broke 18 minutes for the 3^rd time, and Ben Heintz is starting to get over his sickness with a JV win in 17:58. 

Dual Meets -- CB West continues to roll

I just wanted to quickly comment on a couple of  Mid-Week Meets. CB East just looked strong in Hershey, but CB West took them to task on Wednesday afternoon putting 5 in the top 8 during a tri-meet (Pennridge was also there). West is still looking dangerous this season and Fortna has continued to look strong. On a Dual meet note, CV dominated Central Dauphin, but I wanted to mention that Ben Watson (Wilson??) of CD started off his season well by beating out Quinn Wasko. They were just over 30 seconds ahead of Higgins and other CV runners. 

That's all for Now Folks!

-- ForrestCRN