Mid-Penn Boys Preview

By Sean Collins

District 3 is an absolute mess right now behind Hempfield, but luckily for us, we get to see almost all of the other contenders on Saturday at the Mid-Penn Championships. Add in State College and Mifflin County from District 6 and this race becomes a great preview for 2 district races.

The major favorite for this race is State College. State College has been strong all season running well at Spiked Shoe and putting together a good showing at Foundation. This State College team is lead by Alex Milligan and Nick Feffer who have been debatably the best top 2 in the conference. They are followed by a strong pack led by Owen Wing and have competed incredibly well at this meet in the past. 

Hershey comes into this race as a co-favorite with State College. Hershey has 7 runners at 17:06 or faster on the quick Lehigh course, but that type of speed is not to be doubted. They lack a clear front runner which is a double-edged sword come championship time. It allows 1 person to have a stellar race and greatly lower team score, but also gives the possibly of a bad race from any one of them to balloon the team score. Thankfully for them, they have 6 runners together so they can survive a bad race from 1 of them.

Lower Dauphin performed the best of any district 3 team at Carlisle and placed a large gap between themselves and a pack of CV, Carlisle, and Chambersburg that all finished within 2 points of each other. Lower Dauphin is led by Kyler Shea who should be looking for a Mid-Penn title against Zach Seiger and Milligan. Lower Dauphin’s biggest weakness is their 1-5 spread which is over 2 minutes by PR. This spread is least important at Mid-Penn’s but will have a great effect two weeks later at Districts.

Cumberland Valley, Chambersburg, and Carlisle finished 2 points apart at the invite and all have a great chance to overthrow Lower Dauphin as a 3rd place team on Saturday. Cumberland Valley sports an amazing 1-5 spread of 17seconds by PR, but the question is how far up the standings their 1 can get. If their #1 is in the top 15, expect a score sub-120. If it dips below that, there will likely be a few teams jumping over them. Carlisle and Chambersburg are more similar. Both sport approximately 1 minute spreads with an emphasis on the back of the pack. Their team scores will all depend upon whether their 3-4-5s can score in the 30s.

There are a couple of other big schools to fight it out this weekend. Mechanicsburg has a great top 3 that could do major damage, but their 4-5 could spell them doom if they score 50+ which is likely based on PRs. Look for Cupp, Tomasko, and Sulon to all be fighting for top 10 spots though. 

The other big team is Camp Hill. Camp Hill is unlikely to jump in front of the AAA schools, but their spot as a A title contender means they deserve to be on the list. If Camp Hill pops into the top 6 at this meet, I’d move them to #1 in the A rankings. Even a top 10 finish here would imply a podium place at Hershey. Hopefully their big top 3 will gain more confidence before coming back in 2 weeks to a much less packed District 3 A race.