Nike Cross Nationals Recap

by Jarrett Felix

It's official. Only Jake Brophy remains active in the 2015 cross country season and our last remaining team is hanging up their spikes to prepare for track season. I'll get to Downingtown West in a second, but first let's talk about everybody's new favorite runner: Kent Hall. As of the writing of this post, he's currently holding 52% of the vote (in a poll that has 9 options) in the "most impressive performance from regionals" poll and the Unionville stand out proved that his race was no fluke after finishing 32nd at Nike Cross Regionals. It's the third highest finish by a PA athlete in the history of the meet, behind only Tony Russell in 2013 (one of the best ever) and Reiny Barchet in 2012 (a sub 4:10 and 9:03 guy). That's some nice company.

Hall's rise in recent weeks (6th at regionals and 32nd at nationals) is truly unprecedented in the last decade or so of racing. There have been some surprising national qualifiers over the years, but nobody exploded in late November, early December quite the way that Hall did. Max Norris and Casey Comber were a couple national qualifiers who surprised at Footlocker, but those guys were 4th and 6th at states running 16:00 and sub 15:50. Both were proven state medalist type runners who held strong PRs on Lehigh's fast course in addition to their proven hilly runs. Hall was 11th at states (16:05) and 8th at districts (15:46). And honestly, I felt neither of those were bad races for him (not trying to say I'm an authority on this sort of thing but for reference I predicted him 9th and 6th at those two meets and he was within a few seconds of both). The only guys to finish outside the top 10 at states and then advance to nationals in the past 10 years are Vince McNally, Ben Furcht and Reiny Barchet. McNally had run 15:02, won districts and been 5th and 3rd at states the previous two years. Furcht had run sub 15:10 at districts, won Paul Short and ran a faster time at Foundation than eventual state champ Jimmy Tarsnane ran at states. Barchet was a bit of a streaky runner, but he had been 3rd at districts, the top freshmen at states and trained with the best runner in the region every day at practice. With all due respect to all, his regular season wasn't on par with those guys (although it was very, very good) and his Unionville squad didn't give him a lot of training partners quite at his level.

And most importantly, by all accounts I've heard, this is Kent Hall's first ever season of cross country! He didn't run in PA last year (we know that for sure) and had strong (but not jaw dropping) track times last spring. This is just an amazing testament to Hall's hard work, determination and ability to peak in the big moments. He's had a long, long season and he has only gotten better as the year has gone on. Big time props to Kent Hall. What a fantastic season. If you're out there Kent, drop me an email, I'd love to share your story with the site readers.

Alright, I got that out of my system. Let's move on to Downingtown West. I'm sure they aren't too thrilled with grabbing 17th place at nationals when they were aiming for top 5 and obviously some of their guys at a tough day, but you have to remember these are the best guys in the entire nation. If you look at the NCAA results, every year there are blow ups, even by the best and most experienced runners. These are just young kids. I think it looks like a few guys may have gotten out fast (the whole race went out fast and some big names paid for it), but for West to realistically compete for a top five spot, they needed guys in the top 25-30 runners and that's where the Hoeys put themselves early from what I could tell. Strong race from Alsansky to move up solid through the pack during the race and help out in the top five for the first time this season. He had a nice stretch run to his season. Also it's worth noting that Josh Hoey (finishing in 72nd) now holds the best finish by a sophomore at the NXN championships for PA, barely passing the mark set by Ryan Gil (78th) back in 2008. Ultimately, 17th is a decent showing and winning the Northeast Regional will make this team a historic program.

With the season now officially over, I feel comfortable finally beginning to truly and wholeheartedly compare this year's DT West team to the great teams of the past. Coatesville is still safe as the #1 team of the decade (which I never particularly doubted, despite penntrack throwing out some contrary ideas pre-nats), but I think it's a very fair discussion to compare DT West to both of the Henderson state champ teams in 2012 and 2013 as well as the 2012 5th place O'Hara team. I'm planning to touch on that in full force down the road (the all-decade lists are coming!), but for now I'll tell you I haven't picked an order for these 4 teams (so feel free to share yours). Henderson won two state titles and they beat a great OH team to do it in 2012. OH was 5th at nationals, but you also have to remember that those conditions (incredibly muddy and slick, watch the video I linked up in a previous post for yourself) were something of an ultimate equalizer. O'Hara was still a baller team, but if you look at how crazy some of those results were, you have to at least take a second to think about it. Of course the CBA team O'Hara went toe to toe with in 2012 was defending national champions, a better squad than this year's CBA team I would wager.

But I'm getting carried away here, this is a discussion for another time.

For now, I'm hoping that everyone is healthy on the DT West team and holding their head high so that they will be ready to do some big things on the track. It was an epic season for these guys. They overcame a lot of adversity to get to this point. If you read their interviews, they bonded and grew closer together. They believed in each other and they trusted in the plan to help them get to this point. Their top 3 is one of the greatest I have ever seen and their depth was truly underrated at a variety of points this season. It's been fun to watch DTW and I'm excited to see what the next chapter is in your story.