By Sean Collins
My friend Alex Fox previously posted an article about how New York would beat Pennsylvania in a dual meet. Now I understand how my Cornell counterpart might see New York pulling out the win at Icahn Stadium, but move that meet to Penn’s Franklin Field and PA is going to come away with the title. Pennsylvania has never held an end of season multi-state affair on home soil, while New York hosts the Dream Mile as well as NXN and FLNE. It’s time that PA gets to host, and win this championship dual meet.
To recap the rules, the individual events from the 400 to 2 mile(no steeplechase) are run as well as the 4x4 and the 4x8, with a maximum of 5 individuals per event and a 1 individual event max per runner. Typical dual meet scoring of 5-3-1 will be used, high score wins.
400m: New York obviously has the better 400m runners of the two states, with Rai Benjamin hopefully representing Antigua and Barbuda in either this summer’s IAAF championships or in the Rio Olympics. Behind him are Izaiah Brown (a sub 47 man), Richard Rose (a 600m specialist with 47.0 speed) and another slew of runners under 48.50. Pennsylvania only had one runner break 48 seconds, the amazing John Lewis. However, John Lewis ran this a full month before his peak at NBON. His 4x400m splits at the state meet were also rumored in the high 45s and low 46s. Pennsylvania also has a slew of runners under 48.50 with Andrew Snyder of Camp Hill, the AAA champion in Donovan St. Louis, Charles Bowman Jr. and Peter Hughey.
1. Rai Benjamin 45.99 NY
2. Izaiah Brown 46.59 NY
3. John Lewis 46.70 PA
NY 8; PA 1
800m: While the 400m might have been NY’s event, Pennsylvania takes the 800m as their own. 7 different runners went sub 1:52 in PA, while only 4 New York runners accomplished the same feat. Subtract John Lewis, Sam Ritz, and Mikey Brannigan from the race though and the race gets much closer. James Asselmeyer also gets added to the list with his phenomenal splits in the DMR and New York’s team gets even stronger. This is team racing though, and all of PA’s stars have come together in the same race before while New York hasn’t quite done the same. PA takes the race.
1. Domenic Peretta 1:50.43 PA
2. Alek Sauer 1:50.57 PA
3. Dylan Eddinger 1:51.00 PA
Realize that the entire field in this race could go sub 1:52which makes it incredibly close to call.
PA 10; NY 8
1 mile: The closer you look at these two distance states, the depth of these teams will amaze you. Let’s go over the qualifications here: Brannigan is the world record holder for the T20 1500m as well as running 4:03 for the mile. Sam Ritz has run sub 4:11 six different times, Jaxson Hoey was 6th in a stacked USATF junior 1500, Conor Lundy has a 4:08 converted time, Luke Gavigan has a 4:05 1600m split in a DMR, the list goes on and on. Regardless of the race tactics here, I don’t think anyone could beat Brannigan.
1. Brannigan 4:05.73 NY
2. Hoey 4:09.28 PA
3. Ritz 4:09.78 PA
PA 14; NY 13
2mile: Think of the incredible runners who have already for these teams. Ritz, Hoey, Lewis, and Peretta on the PA side and Gavigan, Lundy, Brannigan, and Asselmayer on the NY. Even with these runners out of consideration for this race, the top 16 PA 2 milers and the 12 of the top 15 2 milers in NY are eligible for the race. In fact, the PA team has to leave out a state champ and at least 2 people who have under 9 minutes. The NY team has the faster PRs for the front runners, but not the same depth as PA. For PA in this race, Brehm, Abert, Brophy, James, and Dahl will face NY’s Spiezio, Tooker, Rice, Millar, and Pompilj. Spiezio has the best PR out of this group by about 10 seconds, but Brehm hasn’t lost his first event of a championship meet since his junior year at districts where he ran all four distance events. James would also be looking for his first major title in a final attempt, where will that leave him? With all these guys in the race, would it go out like Loucks or would people be afraid of what happened to McGoey at the PA state meet?
1. Brehm 8:49.69 PA
2. Spiezio 8:49.90 NY
3. Tooker 8:50.13 NY
PA 19; NY 17
Now I don’t know what Alex and Jarrett originally agreed on for the relays, but in my dual meets there are only two teams. So for this dual meet, school jerseys go out the window and these athletes grab their state jerseys. Thus, it will be the all-star teams for each state racing in head-to-head match-ups with 5 points to winner and 0 to the loser.
4x400m relay:
As stated in the 400m: New York has the biggest stars on paper. Leading off will be Izaiah Brown handing off to Calvary Rogers (the 3rd place finisher at NY States), with Richard Rose on 3rdbefore handing off to Rai Benjamin. For PA, leading off will be Andrew Snyder, the AA champion. He will hand to Charles Bowman Jr. who has been plagued with baton issues but has lead CD East to the finals almost every year. To close out the race will be the Cheltenham duo of Christian Brissett and John Lewis. For PA to have a shot to beat NY, they need to pull this 200 runner up to the 400 as a last ditch effort.
1. New York 3:07.99
2. Pennsylvania 3:09.53
NY 22; PA 19
4x800m Relay:
With the meet on the line, these two teams will have the meet decided by the 4x800 relay. This is a dual meet so doubling and tripling becomes a factor at the end of meet. For PA, state record holder John Lewis will attempt the triple and lead off for his home state. Lewis will hand off to a fresh Billy McDevitt who has a 1:51.47 to his name. On 3rd leg will be Dominic Perettawho has been proven on the double at the PA state meet. The anchor will be Alek Sauer of Pennsbury who showed his fantastic anchoring ability at Penn Relays and PA States. For NY, depth is a huge issue here. They are forced to put Mikey Brannigan on lead off knowing that he will be unafraid of John Lewis. Behind Brannigan is a doubling James Asselmayer, a fresh Luke Germanakos, and a doubling Kyle Barber who won NY states at the distance. Who comes out on top?
1. Pennsylvania 7:22.72
2. New York 7:27.00
PA 24; NY 22
Final score: PA 24 over NY 22
No matter how you score this meet, both of states have fantastic distance running squads. We really do wish we’d get to see these two fantastic states race head-to-head. I have deep respect for everyone in this meet and for all of the runners who just missed the analysis as well. For those returning to HS next year, good luck at your respective state meets (and grab a #1 spot in next year’s mock meet). For those graduating and joining the college or pro ranks, we hope you have great success and a wonderful transition to the next level of races.
*Author’s Note: Mr. Fox’s Big Red currently do have bragging rights over the Quakers L *
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