Footlocker Northeast Regional

by Jarrett Felix

Footlocker Northeast Regional Preview

States in Region: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington DC

            By the time the gun goes off at Van Cortlandt Park, it will have been three weeks since our PA athletes competed in Hershey at what (for most at least) was the most important meet of their season. Now by any measure that’s a long stretch of time, but I think we actually caught a break this year because states was the 7^th, rather than the 1^st and cut our wait time down a week. Of course, you could look at this as a negative or a positive. In one respect, the grind from states to regionals was decreased and, mentally, our athletes should be a bit more prepared. But physically, many athletes take some down time after states before revamping their training heading into regionals. With only three weeks to rest, revamp and re-peak, that schedule may be too rushed to be as effective as it was in the past.

            But I’m really belaboring the point. Our best runners will be ready on race day.
            We made a post recently on the most up to date list of entrants for Saturday’s Footlocker Championship and you can see what we have complied here, but if you don’t feel like reading through lists and prefer long, careful analysis, just keeping reading! That’s kinda my thing.
            I should start by admitting that I really don’t know the first thing about the out of state competition. In fact, I didn’t even look at the entrants from out of state. If you do know, feel free to share some info on the top competition from the rest of the Northeast Region. Personally, I won’t even pretend to analyze that stuff. I try my best to stick to what I know (when I don’t, I get crushed bymy other writers in NCAA prediction contests). However, this will be my 10^th Footlocker Regional meet for which I have closely followed the PA action, so I like to think I have a rough idea of what kind of talents can make the jump to nationals.
            Since 2006, we have had 18 Footlocker National Qualifiers (to qualify for Nationals you need to finish in the top 10 of your respective region at regionals, that’s the only way to get there). We have had one regional champion (Brad Miles in 2009 at Sunken Meadow), one runner-up (Mark Dennin in 2007) and three guys who have snuck by on the bubble in 10^th. The rest fell somewhere in between. Every year dating back to Paul Springer in 2006, we have had at least one national qualifier from Footlocker. Our best result was sending four in 2012.
            We have had three juniors qualify (counting Jake Brophy last year), but the previous two guys to qualify as juniors failed to qualify again as seniors. In fact, if you add in Ian Gottesfield and Craig Miller, our last four junior qualifiers have failed to qualify as seniors. So even though I’m confident in Jake Brophy, nothing is guaranteed when it comes to the best runners in the area. Overall, age seems to be a big factor at regionals, as it is most big meets. Although we have had a variety of successful underclassmen at the state and regional level, out of our top 20 finishers the previous nine years, we have had 0 sophomores, 10 Juniors and 32 Seniors.
            One final housekeeping note, Nike Cross Nationals has gained significant steam in recent years, starting as Nike Team Nationals with no regional meets, adding a regional meet in 2007 that had no individual qualifiers, only teams, and then expanding to a full force team and individual qualifying meet in 2008. Since the Nike Cross Regional meet and the Footlocker Regional meet are on the same day, runners can only compete at one of the two and, therefore, the talent at Footlocker Regionals has arguably decreased over the years. For example: Josh Izewski finished 31^st in 2006 running 16:01.9 at VCP while Colin Abert finished 13^th in 16:01.1 in 2013. That’s a sample size of one and not a full scale statistical analysis, but it’s at least something to keep in mind if you flip back over old results.
            But enough history lessons. Let’s talk present and future.
            As of the writing of this post, there are 11 members from my post season Top 50 list currently scheduled to compete in New York this Saturday. Before I get to them, let’s quickly take a look at some of the under the radar story lines. There is a freshman/sophomore race at FLNE and, most likely, PA will be well represented. Freshmen Mike Morris from Hershey and Matthew Eissler from Pennridge were both the top freshmen in their respective district meets (3 and 1) this year. Morris was particularly impressive at both Mid Penns and Districts and had one of the best freshmen campaigns we have seen out of D3. Nicholas Bower from Parkland and teammate Riley Williamson are also both frosh to watch. It’s a bit trickier to say whether the sophomores will run in the championship race or the freshmam/sophomore race, but guys like Ryan Campbell from CR North (top 50 finisher at states), Jacob Underwood from Wilson (runner up to DiCintio at his league meet) and fellow CR North sophomores Sam Early and Ethan Koza could all be factors at the front of the field. So others who may get involved are Tyler Lesser from Milton, Avery Lederer from Penncrest and Ethan Bernstein from Saucon Valley. Last year, PA had the individual champion in this race: Pleasant Valley’s Seth Slavin.
            One more side note, I love that CR North and Hatboro Horsham are sending so many guys to compete at the regional meet. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these teams have some of the highest attendance rates at FLNE and also happen to have accounted for 5 different FL qualifiers in the last decade, none of whom have been state champions individually and a couple who have been reasonably surprising. There is a culture here and culture pays dividends.
            Other strong names that didn’t fall into my end of season top fifty include guys like Dan Kyvelos and Michael Geiger of Parkland, Carl Fortna of Fleetwood, Matthew D’Aquila from Lower Merion, Matt Scarpill form CB South (I like his sleeper potential, he was sub 16 at Lehigh for leagues), Eddie Goebel and Stephen Paul of LaSalle (keep in mind Goebel killed it on this course at Manhattan) and Nate Becker from Ephrata.
            I’m a huge fan of the teammate effect at this meet. Of course, I don’t know if it actually means anything, but I think having a training partner working towards this footlocker goal with you can be huge. They don’t even have to be on the same level, it’s just nice to have a training partner to get in regular runs with, keep you focused and grind with in workouts. Personally, I think this makes a big difference. That’s why I’m really glad to see Josh Goetz from CB East on the entry list alongside Jake Brophy. Goetz has had a nice season, helping the CB East boys get over the hump to states and it will be fun to watch him at regionals similar to Connor Sands a year ago.
            So now let’s dive into the top fifty guys that will be involved. They are the following names: Jake Brophy, Liam Conway, Bryce Descavish, Jack DiCintio, Todd Gunzenhauser, Nathan Henderson, Dominic Hockenbury, Zach Lefever, Seth Slavin, Jake Susalla and Nick Wolk.
            I’d say Conway, as just a sophomore, is a real long shot here. He will gain valuable experience and I’m super excited that he will be competing. Guzenhauser had a big break through at states and is trending in the right direction (plus his brother qualified back in 2009), but he’s in the longshot category as well, just based on this level of competition. Descavish had a big race at states and has been a consistent force on the trails this year, but, again, finishing in the top 10 at this meet is going to be really tricky. Seth Slavin is another long shot (no one who finished outside the medals in Hershey has qualified for FLN), but I do really like his upside considering he ran really well on this course last year. He leads this group of sleepers for a spot in our PA top 7, a very high honor.
            The next tier is a group of redemption runners in DiCintio, Lefever and Susalla. DiCintio had a very impressive season, but unfortunately finished outside the top 10 at states on the difficult Hershey course. However, we know he closed out his season fantastically at states and regionals a year ago and he was the closest to challenging Hock in 2014. With the right motivation, he could be a factor in New York. Lefever was doing some of the most underrated running of the year in 2015, before he had to (correct me if I’m wrong here readers) get his appendix out before the state championships. A bit of bad luck meant that he missed states, the best chance to show his fitness and ability. If he has recovered enough (and that’s a big if), he will really surprise people at VCP. Lastly, there is Susalla. This guy has a ton of upside and momentum going into states. He broke 16 on the very difficult Hershey course in his last race, which was only his second major “invitational” of the year (the other being districts). This is a big talent, who can handle hills very well and has run the kind of conservative early season schedule that would allow him to excel at this sort of meet. Especially if he was only just starting to get healthy when he made it to Hershey (think 2012 Max Norris). If anyone is going to be a surprise qualifier (although he’s still a long shot considering how difficult it is) Susalla seems like the best bet.
            Nate Henderson and Nick Wolk are in my borderline discussion. Both of these guys ran very well at states (15:53) and have dominated their respective districts. Wolk ran regionals last year, so he has a bit of experience (although he was not at the front of the group like he will be this year), while Henderson will be a VCP rookie (and is still just a junior). I could see one of these guys ending up in the 9-10 range if they hit their day. Think of it this way, out of the guys who have gone to Footlocker Regionals that broke 16:00 at states at the beginning of the month (13 times), 8 of them have qualified for Footlocker and 11 have finished in the top 20. Five out of seven that ran 15:53 or faster made it Footlocker and the other two were either battling sickness or injury (Gil in 2010 and Abert last year).
            Of course, 4 out of the 5 non-qualifiers who broke 16 at Hershey have been in recent years (since 2012) and the number of guys who break 16 at Hershey has been sky rocketing, hitting an all-time high of 12 in 2015 after hitting 10 in 2014 (13 in the previous 6 years combined).  So you know, statistics can be utilized for whatever narrative you would like to tell.
            My gut instinct, throwing out the numbers is that Wolk is somewhere between 9^th and 13^th and Henderson is just behind him. I think Nate has had a huge year, but he’s just a junior stretching out a long season for the first time. That’s always a tricky move to handle the first time around. But it’s definitely not impossible. Brophy did it last year and Gil and Kennedy were Footlocker rookies when they qualified as Juniors (however, they were not Regional rookies as they had both run NXNE the year before).
            That leaves the big two, both of whom I think, not to jinx anyone, will get through to San Diego without much trouble. I’m always worried about saying something like that because this is such an incredibly difficult achievement, but I feel really good about these guys. Both have won two state titles in their career (10/12 two time state champs in the FL era have made at least one FL championship, the two that didn’t were both AA champs). Brophy qualified last year and Hockenbury almost did as well (he was 15^th as a Junior and 21^st as a sophomore, one of the best finishes PA has seen for that grade). Both guys have set their sights past states on the goal of Footlocker qualifying as well. That’s an underrated part of the equation. It’s a very long season to go from racing in August to racing in November. We saw Brophy start to peter out a bit down the stretch, going from invincible to beat twice by Casey Comber, because he was so tired after such a long season. I doubt he was considering Footlocker prior to his 2014 season. I doubt he stopped thinking about Footlocker prior to his 2015 one.
            Hockenbury ran his fastest time ever on the Hershey lay out (15:49) and flat out dominated all the competition he faced during the cross country season. He ran a 9:05 in an epic duel against Nick Dahl at Henderson, which is a new PR. That’s mind blowing considering his old PR was in excellent conditions during the peak of his spring track season. Clearly, this guy is in shape to make noise and many are speculating he might even be able to take down Brophy in this one. He will be comfortable going out at a hard pace considering his season (and really career) to date and hopefully he holds on and competes for a top 3 spot in this race. I think that’s definitely in play.
            As for Brophy, there isn’t much to say at this point. He’s broken 16 three times on Hershey’s current lay out, something that has never been done. He has pulled off the AAA District One-State Champ double gold twice in a row, something only Russell (also twice) and Brad Miles have done in the last decade+. Both of those guys finished their senior seasons with Regional championships (Miles at Footlocker, Russell at NXN both years). His 15:24 from a year ago is the fastest anyone has run at Hershey by 14 seconds and his 15:39 is 3^rd fastest (behind KJ’s 15:38 last year) and easily the fastest time off a 10 flat opening 2 mile. By my count he’s got 4 runs under 15:12 at Lehigh, the most out of anybody. He’s got 3 sub 15:10, no one has done it twice.
            I think you get my point. These guys are really good. That’s why I’m so interested in seeing how this race plays out. As you probably guessed, I’ve been looking a lot into the All-Time greats list and the last decade worth of talent in PA.  Assuming Hock gets a national bid, these guys are both clear top 5 decade guys. If Brophy gets his second national qualifying spot, based on what I’ve seen, he will be the first two time FL qualifier since 1989 when Mike McWilliams did it for Grove City and only the third two time FL qualifier ever in PA (Mike Connelly being the other). McWilliams and Connelly both finished in the top 10 at FL (twice actually, Connelly was 2^nd as a senior and McWilliams was 4^th). Our highest finisher at Foot Locker this millennium is 13^th (Dustin Wilson in 2011 and Mark Dennin in 2007).
            It’s worth noting that Tony Russell qualified for two straight NXN championships (and finished 11^th in 2014) and Brad Miles qualified individually for NXN as a junior and FL as a senior, therefore making both guys two time national qualifiers.
            But I’m getting ahead of myself. There is history on the line certainly, but what history says or statistics say is all meaningless. Step one, the most basic step, is to qualify for the national championship. Then we will worry about what’s next. Here are my predictions …

            Jake Brophy- 2^nd

            Dominic Hockenbury – 3^rd
            Nick Wolk- 10^th

PA sends three. What are your thoughts?

PS Here’s a list of PA’s top times from Van Cortlandt over the last nine seasons (note: 2009-2011 was held at Sunken Meadow, so those times are not included). National Qualifiers are bolded.

Mark Dennin 15:24.0

Chris Aldrich 15:27.3

Vince McNally 15:30.3

Paul Springer 15:31.9

Casey Comber 15:36.4

Jake Brophy 15:37.4*

Ross Wilson 15:41.0

Vince McNally 15:41.9*

Brendan Shearn 15:45.5

Max Norris 15:48.3

Dan Lowry 15:50.6

Brent Kennedy 15:50.9*

Austin Pondel 15:51.0

Jason Weller 15:52.9

Paul Power 15:53.3

Ben Furcht 15:53.5

Dominic Hockenbury 15:53.7*

Max Kaulbach 15:54.5*

Colin Abert 15:56.9

Colin Martin 15:58.2

Scott VanKooten 15:58.5

Neal Berman 15:59.8

If you are wondering how my predictions went last year, I made a two part Footlocker Preview post last year which I've linked up below.
Part 1
Part 2