District 1 Thoughts -- ForrestCRN

Initial Thoughts:

West Chester Henderson takes second with 4 runners in the top 20. Smucker is the top freshman in 18^th. These boys packed up very well and Knapp came up big as expected to placed 6^th overall for his team. A 103 5^th man really hurt these guys, but if they can run similar at the state meet, they’ll continue this trend of a beastly top 4 that we’ve seen across the state this season. 

Oh yea, Conestoga won their first District title! Congrats to them! Marston had a very strong race for second place to beat out Comber at the end and Killian looked good in 14^th place. Murray had another solid race and really stepped up for this team with a 21^st place finish. Cooper was 41^st at the state meet last season and was 74^th at Districts this season. If he were up with Murray and Nelson this team would be really dangerous, but sadly that’s now how his season progressed. They clearly are great through 7 men with everyone breaking 17 minutes on a very slow day (but then again DTW did the same thing)

CB West grabbed the 3^rd spot and boy they had exactly the day they needed. Mass has really slowed down, but Ian Davies and Iatarola had huge races and both placed in the top 25 following a 13^th place finish from Rock Fortna. This is by far the best we’ve seen this team this season and it’s in the post-season. It’s their first time going to the state meet in Etrain knows when. 

CRN raced pretty poorly. I’m glad they continued the trend of making the state meet, but I’m fairly disappointed with the results from these guys. Arita went out slow and was in 13^th with 600m left and was able to finish 9^th, but it wasn’t a smart race by him, but on a slow day the guys behind him raced the same or slower than they did at leagues (on a much slower day), but CBW guys all had improvements. Griswold (-), Haas (-1), Laitman (+3), Heintz (+6). Things haven’t totally come together for these guys yet, but I’m hoping the hills of Hershey will do them some favors. This team does have some hope for a good future with 3 impressive sophomores and two solid freshmen (JV race were under 17:45). That being said they had the best 5^th man in the district, which is possibly the first time that’s happened for Council Rock North (2004 – present).

DTW makes states with the last spot just being out an impressive performance from the Central Bucks East. Sappey ran very well and finish 7^th overall followed by a very tight pack of 12 seconds 2-5. They return all but 5^th man Charlie Barton, but Jake O’Neil is just a second behind him. This team has time to really pull everything together, but this is a good step from 8^th to 5^th in the District and it gives them some valuable state meet experience. CBE looked great for 6^th place just 11 seconds behind DTW. Brophy grabbed the victory, no surprises there, and a very solid race from Connor Sands (who will go to states) really helped this team’s lower placement. 

Pennsbury missed out big time. Webb ran a great race of 15:26 to place 4^th overall. He’s just a beast in the post-season. That’s all that needs to be said about that. Alek Sauer usually comes up big, but he’s had a very tough XC campaign and it didn’t finish well as he placed 40^th overall and was the first one out of the state meet. Bortman ran decent and finished the same time from leagues to districts, but Tokar and Wick had tough days in the 4-5 slots and either broke 17. Not sure why the other Wick didn’t run, but Sauer’s twin freshman brothers Aiden and Aidan (I almost hope this isn’t true for their sakes) ran 17:41 and 18;01, for what that’s worth. 

Last piece of note Council Rock South had two individual qualifiers in Hanna (10^th) and Maguire (19^th) who return next year along with their 4-7 runners. Their 15^th place finish is a bit worse than what we saw from 12^th place CB West from last season, but I think these guys will really contend next year with two great low sticks.

Individually we know Brophy got the win. I’m not surprised in the least bit. He is such a stud in XC and I’ll never forget watching him finish last season at the district race as he glided in with a smile on his face looking so relaxed after a 15:24. The kid just has it and he can kick really hard. No way Marston, Comber, Power, or even Webb can keep up with his speed/strength combination. A really fast states race would be the only thing that could really hurt him, and frankly I think that’s what we’ll see with Abert leading the charge. Power had a tough day and I’m intrigued with how he’ll turn out at the state meet. I think, if the day is good, we could see another sub 16 performance from him, but who knows. The 3 studs from Ches-Mont’s finish 6-8. I thought Arita could break them up, but they just enjoy running together too much. Knapp gets the nod over Sappey as predicted. 

Hanna raced much better than expected and almost beat Arita. He’s really done fantastic this season and I’ve been very impressed. He’ll be a real force on the track this year, I have no doubt. The sophomore stud from Souderton, Connor McMenamin placed 11^th overall and I would bet he’ll be a medalist at states. He’s been a great all season and he broke 16 on a very slow day. Great to see Lukas Marcelis’ name in red from Wissahickon. His training seems much more on point this season and he peaked exceptionally well. We didn’t see him too high in any meets or rankings all year but his very quick 16:16 proves how solid he’s looking. Placing 20^th is big for him after missing states last year. Sands gets the nod after a big race for CBE.

 We also saw another two sophomores individual made the state meet in Austin Maxwell of Kennett and Liam Galligan of Springfield. Galligan has been on our radar for a while and his 30^th place finish comes as no shock. Austin Maxwell is a guy I probably should have picked up on and I would have said he had an outside shot at making it, but his 25^th place I did not see coming at all. He placed 11^th at Ches-Mont’s (8^th finisher for Ches-Mont’s at Districts) and his 2 mile PR is from this XC season in 10:09, but he is able to roll at 5:16 pace for 5k. I’m very excited to see how he progresses. Also representing the sophomore class well from D1 are Iatarola and McDonald from CBW. 

We have two freshman who qualified for the state meet in Spencer Smucker (18^th) and Liam Conway (27^th). I knew Smucker was good, but I didn’t think he could beat Conway, but he did and by 9 seconds. Smucker is looking scarily similar to Reiny Barchet did and maybe, if he can stay injury free, we’ll see some fantastic races in his future. For now he’s representing WCH very well as a 4^th man. Conway had a tough race after his great 16:10 performance from leagues. It’s just important that he’s made it to the state meet. The experience will be valuable for him. And he helped junior Abe Van Helmond make it as well.

 Shaun Collins is the only NP runner to make it, Tung had a very rough day, Eddinger and O’Reilly, the 800 specialists made it, along with seniors Eric Chapman and Jonathan Perlman. Perlman was with Arita at two miles, but a 30 second rift was caused in the last mile by Arita’s kick, but more so of Perlman’s lack of health. He’ll have another week of recover under him next week, but the hills will be tough. It’s a shame after he started off so strongly. Another senior stud who sneaks in after injury is Josh Smith of Avon Grove who also didn’t run leagues, but placed 33^rd to get a spot. We also saw two Bensalem runners in Mays and Ramirez make it in and finally senior Phil Gunderson of Pennridge gets the last spot in 16:29. This year was even slower than my senior season that had me at 61^st place in 16:44, but that was 58^th today.

 Scarpill of CB South also did not race, which is a real shame.

If anyone could tell me why this was the case that’d be great, because it rained yesterday morning, but the District 11 race obviously wasn’t nearly as affected at the District One race and vey both accrued similar rain levels. 

--ForrestCRN