4xWinners

by Jarrett Felix

What a crazy weekend. With three NCAA championships, one HS National championship and a USA championship with a spot on the starting line in the Portland hosted world finals, I had up to five different windows open on my laptop at a time. It was hard not get fired up watching some of the excellent races and naturally my wheels began turning for yet another post. So I’m back at it again folks.

Since I’m still in a relay state of mind after this weekend’s action, I decided to make this post into a “4xWinners” relay with some of PA’s top performances getting some solid analysis. But before I get into that, I should probably throw some love to some of the alternates for the relay. Props to Joe Maguire for a really nice 2 mile in the emerging elite section, breaking into the 9:20s. Also, Mike Kolor added another killer run for his season, improving on his PA #2 status in the mile and clocking a 4:13. That’s rarified air for indoor track. And Tucker Desko of Pennridge perhaps leads the honorable mentions after running 1:53.38 for 800m to win one of the slower sections at NBIN. Would have loved to see Desko in that loaded 800m indoor final, especially considering he is now undefeated at this distance indoors.

Now onto the relay …

Lead Off: Dominic Hockenbury

On Friday night, Hock pushed the pace and hammered through a gutsy 5,000m on the Armory’s track, earning All-American honors and clocking a 14:45.09. According to my records, there’s nobody from PA who has run a faster 5k on the track indoors. And I think this holds true for outdoors as well. The 5k at the high school level doesn’t get a lot of love (outside of cross country) but at the next level the 5k and 10k are kind of a big deal. Hock seems like he has the skill set to excel in those events and, in case you haven’t been paying attention, the Syracuse Orangemen have been doing quite well in this department.

Hockenbury comes into outdoors looking to bolster his already impressive resume. The sub 9 mark is atop his list of goals, but I’d also expect to see him in the field at Penn Relays over 3,000m. This is an interesting spot for him. I really feel like he could have a Dominic Deluca type season over these next few months. Deluca ran in the low 9 minutes at Henderson, 8:21 for 3k at Penn Relays and soloed a 9:03 at his district championships. Another interesting variable will be what Dom chooses to do at 1600m. He’s been really improving his speed and his under distance work the past two years and, considering his dominance in the 32, he may try the 32-16 double and bolster his hardware. But there is also Chris Dugan’s state meet record (around 9:04) sitting there for the taking and that could be priority #1 come Shippensburg.

Second Leg: Nick Dahl

The Junior from GFS has had one heck of a stretch. At the PTFCA State Championships, Dahl led of the 4x800m in a blistering 1:55 to break the race open. He then anchored his GFS team to a near come from behind victory in the DMR, closing down the last half mile in close to two minutes. Then, after his two huge relay performances at PSU, he changed venues to New York and threw down an unreal 4:10.39 anchor leg to push GFS from well back to 3^rd overall in heat one of the championship DMR. Note that none of these are the distance Dahl has been famous for over the years, as he ran 9:01.81 for a full two miles last outdoors at NBON, one of the top 10-12 marks in PA history (although he did add a 9:13.68 full two mile on Sunday morning).

I honestly didn’t think Dahl had this kind of speed in his tank, but running a blistering 4:10 split puts him ahead of where Kevin James was last year by a few ticks (James split 4:10.62) and in line with Tony Russell as a junior (split around 4:11 for the 4xMile). A 4:10 indoors (although a split) puts him on the short list with Russell, James, Springer, Ritz and Blair Mancini for the best indoor milers in state history.

But what happens outdoors? He goes back to the independent league where he won’t have the luxury of racing the best in the state at his state championships and will likely get lost in the late May shuffle as a result. I’d guess he will be in the NBON field and look to drop even more time off his killer 2 mile time and he will likely be a player at the Henderson meet (Dahl v. Hock v. Brophy would be something historic). However, I’m most interested to see what GFS decides to do at Penn Relays. Low 10:20s in the DMR will get you in and they could be competitive in that field with a 10:10-10:15 type time. But Dahl really carried the relay this past weekend and sacrificed sure fire all-state individual honors indoors to get his relays on the medal stand instead. Maybe the individual 3k is the more logical choice?

The last wrinkle: GFS is getting quite good at the 800. They ran an 8 flat 4x8 without Dahl and could just run that event at Penn Relays. They will definitely be qualified and they could run Dahl on the relay if they want and give him the rest of the day to recover for the 3k similar to what Jake Brophy did last year (and will likely do again this year, unless CB East really goes after the DM to start off the spring). Should be fun to watch unfold.

Third Leg: State College

A relay within a relay. That’s some inception stuff right there. The State College boys jumped to #3 on the PA All-Time indoor list with their 3^rd place finish at nationals this Saturday, clocking a 7:45.60. They were second in their heat and his 0.33 away from the title against Dublin Ohio (the slow heat was one in an absurdly fast 7:45.58). SC jumps North Penn, Pennridge and their own school’s 2014 SB (7:46.81).

I went back and looked at some of the splits for some of these all-time relays and listed them out below. I couldn’t find splits on that 2012 Pennridge team that ran 7:45.93 (one of the most underrated performances ever) so I left them out, but that was a dynamite squad indoors.

CB West ’11 7:45.06, PTFCA States: May 1:56.7, McGarvey 1:57.1, Bee 1:56.3, Manley 1:54.7

Abington ’11 7:45.21, NBIN Nationals: Smith 1:58, Watson 1:56, Taylor 1:58, Moran 1:52
State College ’16 7:45.60, NBIN Nationals: Wing 2:00.89, Feffer 1:55.68, Degleris 1:56.45, Milligan 1:52.58
Abington ’11 7:45.93, Armory Invitational: Smith 1:58.3, Watson 1:56, Taylor 1:58.7, Moran 1:52.8
Pennridge ’12 7:45.93, NBIN Nationals
State College ’14 7:46.81, NBIN Nationals: Golembeski 1:59.17, Post 1:56.66, Adams 1:57.69, Cather 1:53.29
North Penn ’08 7:47.48, NSIC Nationals

Note: Abington’s 7:45.21 was a victory over the 2011 Long Beach Poly team that ended up finishing the year with a National Record in the 4x8, under 7:30.

Any time you have a team running this fast and posting times faster than legendary 4x8 squads like North Penn and CB South, you have to start considering the records. That outdoor 4x8 record is a doozy: 7:33 set in 2009 in one of the greatest races in state history. They ran splits of 1:55-1:55-1:53-1:49 to get there and were anchored by one of the state’s best ever 800 men in Tom Mallon (now Hall of Famer).

But SC has to deal with some history. The two teams ahead of them on the indoor list, CB West and Abington, both cracked 7:40 at Penn Relays, but didn’t get back to that time by states. May got injured for West and Moran seemed like he was breaking down at times for Abington as well (although he stepped up big at states). Pennridge had an injury to one of their front men from that 7:45 team and didn’t end up leaving Shippensburg with the state title in 2012. Neither Pennridge nor State College (2014) cracked 7:40 outdoors but teams like CB South and Pennsbury have pulled it off, despite running slower indoors by a good bit. It’s really hard to run at a top level for both indoor and outdoor track and keeping everybody healthy is always tricky.

However, I think this SC team has a chance to be among the greats when all is said and done. They ran 7:41.99 in 2014 and 7:41.50 in 2015 with two completely different squads so clearly this is a deep program. This year’s team returns three guys from that 7:41 team and all of them are basically already running at the level they finished at last outdoors. Degleris has been an animal on the 3^rd leg, few teams have that kind of ability sitting in their back pocket. It’s also worth noting, SC went from a 7:55 type team to a 7:41 type team last year with this same group (a 14 second drop). If they dropped 10 seconds this year (a tall, tall task I know), they would be a 7:35 and sit at #2 in PA history.

All that being said, I still think this outdoor season will feature a lot of challengers for SC’s throne. I expect Pennridge, who ran 7:40 last year, to come at the event with a renewed focus. Tucker Desko is an animal and they have a couple freshmen that are learning more each week. Austin Howell could be a secret weapon for the team if he focuses up on the 8. Plus Abington and CB West ran right with SC through three legs at states and both teams are no strangers to prestige in this event. Plus, inevitably, there will be a district 3, district 7 or other less known district who rises to the occasion during the spring. Those districts don’t take indoors as seriously as the Philly schools and sometimes they make huge breakthroughs in the warm weather. A well-placed rivalry, like Cumberland Valley vs. Chambersburg in 2012, can go a long way towards producing a state championship.

Anchor Leg: Domenic Peretta

If you are making a relay team for PA, you would be hard pressed to find a better anchor leg than Dom Peretta of Beaver Falls. In his first ever indoor track season, Peretta stormed to an 800m state championship and added a 1:50.58 for silver at NBIN this weekend, the #3 time in indoor history just fractions of a second away from Kyle Francis (1:50.55) and John Lewis (1:50.57). He also jumped Elias Graca to become the fastest 800m runner in WPIAL Indoor history. In case you forgot, last year’s 1:50 man John Lewis went on to run 1:48.33 for 800m and grab a national championship. And Kyle Francis was pretty strong in his own right, running 1:49.37 and joining the rare sub 1:50 club in PA.

But amazingly, I’m still not convinced this is Peretta’s best event. I want to see this guy in the mile this outdoor season as I think he could do something spectacular. Personally, I feel that’s his best event and he jumps out as the best challenger to Vandegrift’s state record in recent memory (although barely because Sam Ritz was amazing last year). Keep in mind, based on what I’ve found, only Ken Lowry in 1982 and Craig Miller in 2006, have come within 4 seconds of Vandegrift’s state record of 4:03.22 (Ritz ran a 1500m that converts to about 4:04 and puts him in the ball game if you want to get technical and Russell split 4:07.16 at indoor nats on the DMR).

I think Peretta will likely focus on the 800, he seems very interested in cracking the 1:50 barrier (it’s been a goal of his for years and I can’t say I blame him) so that will likely be first priority. But if he gets that early enough, we could see a shift to the 1600. Who knows. I’m sure he and Kolor will have an epic showdown at Baldwin again and that should be a ton of fun.

 
It’s hard to believe most people likely had no idea who Peretta was even a year ago. Now he’s on the verge of becoming one of PA’s top 5 all-time greats.

That's the relay! Who did I leave off? Outdoor predictions? You know the drill, comment away friends.