District Recap: A

by Jarrett Felix

Remember a full list of state qualifiers for each district, district results and a recap of how my predictions fared are all available at LXV+. I would have posted it up here as well, but I thought it would have been too much clutter on the site.

District One
Michael Gunden took down the individual title in impressive fashion, winning by 26 seconds over the freshman from Jenkintown Jack Miller. Gunden was certainly the favorite for the title, but he had looked vulnerable last week at leagues so to see him deliver on this stage is big. Gunden and Jamaal Aw-yoonis both have experience on the state course from a year ago and it will be interesting to see how they match up in the medal conversation. The frosh Miller will be a rookie at states, so it will be interesting to see how he handles the stage and the course. He will be joined by teammate Christian Geer who I think has potential for a strong bounce back race after his 7th at Districts.

Meanwhile, New Hope ended up grabbing the team title over Jenkintown, bolstered by adding back into the line up sophomore Chris Cammarata after a long lay off. He and is brother Eric both placed in the top 6 overall to help give New Hope a nice front running presence, but it was their pack that ultimately sealed the victory. New Hope as a program has nice experience at states and ran solid at Foundation earlier this fall. I'm interested to see if they can utilize their pack and their depth to upset a few teams at Hershey.

District Two
Here's the craziest story of the weekend as far as I can tell. In the D2 Championships, Will Davies came out of nowhere to earn the District 2 title. The Riverside senior who, as far as I know, never ran at a major XC invitational and apparently he is a 400m runner during track, but he won the title over one of last year's top 10 finishers at the state meet Matt Murray by 30 seconds. Davies is still something an unknown commodity on the XC scene so it's hard to immediately project him into the front pack at states, but who really knows what this guy's ceiling is going to be.

In the team battle, Elk Lake and Holy Cross continue to be the class of the field, with Elk Lake's Cody Oswald returning to top form once again to lead EL with a 3rd place finish. We know this team has potential to mix it up at the front of the state meet, but Oswald, now a bit more experienced and mature, will play a huge role in deciding this team's fate. I also think Hunter Bedell should have a strong improvement heading into states based on his run there earlier this season. They have some nice depth which could benefit them if things get tight, but they will need to really unleash their front running if they want to climb out of the 5th spot towards the podium.

District Three
Camp Hill showed why they are the team most likely to win the state championship in a week's time with a dominant showing at Districts. Cooper Leslie took the win over William Greene to set the tone and then Behney and Gabig followed not far behind for 3rd and 4th. But we knew the top three were solid, what I was watching more was the 4-5 spots, and I was impressed with what I saw. Dan Shank had a really strong day, bouncing back excellently from Mid Penns and really shining in the 4 spot. Patrick Dorsey also came through nicely to take the 5 spot and give Little some extra push out there. I'd say they are the favorites to win states as things currently stand, but I'll have to dive in a bit more to say exactly who I think is going to take this one.

The top 4 or so runners in this race all have realistic state medal chances in Hershey, especially bolstered by the fact that this year's district meet was at Big Spring rather than Park View. Will Greene and Leslie have a nice rivalry and are both great talents. You also can't emphasize enough that Behney has an excellent record on this course during championship season: he finished 9th here in 2014 after winning the D3 title.

District Four
Hunter Crawley, the Junior from South Williamsport, continued a fantastic season by winning the district title with relative ease at Bloosmburg. Crawley won by roughly 23 seconds on a bit of a windy day to earn the gold and keep the title in South Williamsport's name for yet another year. Crawley was a bit of an inexperienced unknown in 2014, but now he has big meet experience, a state medal in XC and a district championship. Is it crazy to think this guy could end up in the top five at states? Competing for the win? That's for us to ponder over the next couple days.

Props to the Loyalsock sophomores for running big out there. Quinn Serfass and Ryan Sullivan really impressed taking 2-3 in this race and beating some solid runners from around the district including Keegan Beard and the NEB boys.

Speaking of Northeast Bradford, the team won the district title in dominate fashion with a tight pack in the top 13 of the meet. Casey Ellis was the #1 man followed by Nate Mosier, both ahead of last year's state medalist Levi Upham. Northeast Bradford has been third at states, just off the podium, the last two years. Garret Smith (the team's #6 at Districts) has an individual medal from 2013 and Upham has a medal from 2014, meaning, in theory, they have a top five that could all potential grab spots in the top 50. However, they haven't done enough thus far to prove to me they are ready to unleash that type of pack. That being said, the pieces are there to make something big happen.

Props to Troy for grabbing the 2nd spot in this one. They came through big time with a top five that had no weak links and mixed it up well in the front with 3 top 20 finishers.

District Five
Southern Fulton will punch yet another ticket to the state championships as Jacob Pryor (who I could have sworn graduated) repeated as district title and led SF to a romp against their rivals. SF finished 16th at states a year ago with Pryor taking 71st overall, but with an extra year of seasoning for their top pieces they may be able to make an impact in Hershey. Their front three are quite talented so if the 4-5 can step up this team could make an imprint.

District Six
The young guns came ready to play at Forest Hills while sophomores Sam Cunkelman and Chris Colwell battled to a 1-2 finish at districts. Cunkelman has looked excellent his last two races and will now enter his second straight state meet, this time with a ton more momentum and experience. Remember Homer City is the same school that produced Angel Piccirillo so we will see if their new top tier talent can have success as well.

Colwell led his Penns Valley to another team title, giving them a front running presence they didn't have last year. The importance of front running didn't rear it's head until states last year for PV, so we will see if Colwell can deliver on the Hershey Hills one more time and transform Penns team score. Last year they placed 8th at states despite not placing a single runner in the top 80 of the front loaded field. This year, with a strong pack but a better front runner, they could catapult themselves up the standings. St. Joe's really came through in a strong moment of redemption after last year's third place finish. Michael Peters had a big day, finishing 4th, and their top three delivered with top 12 performances. Although their pack was a bit back, they actually had some of the better 4-5s in the field, which made the silver very attainable.

District Seven
As expected, District Seven gave us a preview of two of the best teams in the state and a multitude of the top individuals. What I didn't expect, was Sewickley Academy pulling the upset over Winchester Thurston, by 21 points, to keep the WPIAL title in house for at least another year. WT, who won states in 2014 and Foundation this September, looked like an easy pick for the district title, although there were a few concerns after many of their top runners were missing in some invitational results. Those concerns came to light when Shaun Hay, the team's top dog at Red, White and Blue, was MIA in the results, causing an estimated swing of 40+ points in the results.

I'll start by saying this, Winchester Thurston has the potential to come back strong in a week and once again get the title. If Hay comes back (in an eerily similar fashion to what happened last year), then WT still has the best top four in the state and a rapidly evolving #5 in Gordon Pollock. If not, there will be considerable pressure on Kian Delaney, Jack Robinson and Kevin Salipante who are all freshman in their first state championship.

But enough WT talk, let's give some serious credit to the boys from Sewickley. As I mentioned in my Day One recap podcast, this is the second straight year where Sewickley has come out and delivered at districts, showcasing one of the deepest top sevens in the state. Freshman Henry Meakem went from a borderline top 50 runner at foundation, to a killer 21st at WPIALs while their two sophs who struggled to break 20 minutes at Hershey, delivered big time in the 4-5 spot with top 30 finishes (jumping Gordon Pollack who was WT's #4). SA can still potentially run even better as Hanlon and Peirce are experienced and motivated runners who can handle the Hershey hills. They finished as the team's #6 and 7 at this meet.

And of course most importantly of all they have Griffin Mackey and Ben Clouse out front, ready to give the team the best 1-2 punch in the state. This team handled the spotlight well a year ago, winning districts and coming one crazy Shaun Hay re emergence from a state title. We could be looking at a similar story this year, but maybe this time around Hay won't be coming back?

One final note, both Sewickley and WT are still pretty young teams so we might be facing another epic duel in a years time.

The battle for the 3rd and final spot was unreal. Three teams finished within 1 point of one another and ultimately Riverview ended up surprising for the spot over Shenango and Avonworth. Shenango had three in the top 20 overall but then a bit of a drop off while Avonworth (who was 1 point back) had the best 6th runner in the meet, meaning if they had gotten just one more point they would be heading to states. What a thrilling victory for Riverview and a heartbreaking defeat for the others. My heart feels for them. But hey this is what makes XC so exciting and one of the pieces of our sport that should be highlighted and enjoyed! Every second counts. Check the results, there are some guys within a second of one another that surely swung the state qualifying results.

Individually, we got an excellent match up with Peretta and Mackey going toe to toe and Peretta ultimately putting on the jets to close it out at the finish. Mackey loves to go out hard and isn't afraid to push the pace in all conditions (I saw it at Paul Short), but ultimately Peretta has now defeated him back to back years for the district title. That being said, Mackey has been excellent on the Hershey hills and Dom still has some question marks surrounding his ability to take down the title, I thought Peretta would get the win at WPIALs so this result wasn't as much a surprise to me as it was to some others, but states will be the real test and I can't wait.

There are a ton of other potential medalists from this crop. Will Loevner had his best race of the season, Ben Littman was 8th at this race but 10th at last year's state meet, Tristan Forsythe took 4th in a gutsy run where he went after the leaders from the start. Those guys all run for the same team in Winchester Thurston. But Ben Clouse continues to flank Mackey, Cody DiVecchio is rounding back into the form that saw him place top 10 at states and other young rising stars like Gannon Leach, Ben Barnes and Ben Heim grabbed top 10 honors. Last year the WPIAL accounted for 6 of the top 10 and 9 of the top 30 at states. Just saying.

District Nine
Isaac Wilson rolls on after a victory at the D9 championships, setting him up for another medal attempt at Hershey next weekend. Wilson looked very strong against the Cranberry duo of Keenan and Lander and we know he can run the course well based on his Foundation performance. D9 is an underrated district in terms of their individual success in A and I think there are likely some sleepers buried in these district results. Blayde Conley and Devan Cavanaugh each had solid races at districts but have the potential to still improve (Cavanaugh is a returning state medalist), while someone like Luke Guyer of Ridgway has been a front running force before in 2015.

In the team race, Elk County Catholic turned the tables on Cranberry to once again earn the district title. Matt Dippold delivered with a 4th place overall finish, but the team got its biggest lift from a huge day out of junior Zachary Wortman who really impressed me with a 5th place run. Once you factor in Logan Hoffman's 8th place finish and Scott Brazinski's 13th, the ECC top 4 was running away with the title. They will need a little bit more out of the 5 spot to really take the leap into top 4-5 contenders at states, but I really was impressed with what I saw out of Wortman. Cranberry will be ready to defend, however, at states, especially considering they ran well at Foundation earlier this year. Keenan and Lander can really distance themselves from ECC's front running more in a better, more talented race at states while, hopefully for the Zombies, they can also put some distance on ECC's 5.

District Ten
I love being right about predictions (trust me, I really do), but I think I might love it more when I'm wrong. And once again Mercyhurst Prep made me look foolish as they pulled out yet another state qualifying spot, loading up their top five and getting the W over Seagertown, who placed 3 in the top 20 and had four in before Mercyhurst could do the same. But, thanks in part to a huge day from Jimmy Zimmerman who finished 7th, Mercyhurst advanced and, considering their history of clutch running, could be staring a top 5 finish at states in the face.

The winners of the district, Seneca, have now won two titles in a row behind their young core (they return their entire top five) and the Myers twins who are phenomenal medal contenders yet again in Hershey. Historically, Seneca has had trouble matching their district success at states (finding themselves jumped by Mercyhurst on a couple occasions). Could this finally be their year? They have strong depth through 7 guys so the hope is that they can improve on their 6th place finish from a year ago. We will see, but this team is definitely building momentum at the right time.

Individually, one of this year's breakout stars, Connor Walsh, won the title in impressive fashion, He beat Noah Curtin in a wire to wire victory by 16 seconds and continued his stellar 2015. Curtin will be ready to challenge him again at states (where he killed it a year ago), but Walsh should be equally motivated. He just missed out on a state medal last time he was there and I think that will give him a little extra spark on race day. Zac Tingley, the sophomore from Lakeview, took an impressive 3rd ahead of the Myers twins and just two seconds back of Curtin. It will be interesting to see if this means he is a medal contender at states now. Considering the talent around him (Brad Amy was 6th, he also has some state hardware, the Myers twins I think might have four state medals now), he's got a good shot.

D10 will return their top 5 individuals and 6 of their top seven for next season.

District Eleven
 In a rematch between Sheptuk and Li, Sheptuk came ready to play, avenging last year's loss with a clutch victory. That sets him up nicely for states, a course where he mowed down a ton of guys after the first mile (he went out in 5:23 and worked his way up to 38th). Sheptuk will also be bringing his team with him as ES took three of the top six spots and will take a trip together to Hershey for another year in a row. They were 14th last year, but will hope to improve on that showing and jump into the next tier up of teams.

Props to Jared Hinkle on a second consecutive strong race. He took 3rd behind only the two big names in Li and Sheptuk. Plus his name is the same as what people often think my name is so you gotta give credit where credit is due.

District Twelve
This was the Masterman show as this team swept the top five spots to score 15 points. They always dominate this meet to the point where a sweep was actually expected headed into this race. Masterman was the runners up at states just two years ago, but I'm not completely sold this year's squad is of that caliber. History suggests this is still a top 10 team at the state level.

Although I'm not buying in to Masterman's team title chances, I'm 100% on board with Joe Previdi. He absolutely killed it on Belmont's course, running away with the fastest time of the day despite the least competition. Previdi looks really good and has killed it on hilly courses. I bet he is chomping at the bit for a rematch with Clouse and Mackey and this guy could be staring at a top five finish at states. I'd bet he's gunning for even more.