2009 State Championships
by Jarrett Felix
After
back to back titles for the Knights of North Penn, it looked like the torch would
finally pass in 2009. North Penn returned their top 2 runners, but lost #3-6.
Meanwhile, a program with a pair of back-to-back titles on its resume in West
Chester Henderson, returned their entire top 7 from a 7th place team
in 2008. That included Will Kellar who was 2nd at states as a junior
and PA’s #1 returner. With a returning roster of that caliber, it was hard to
leave Henderson off the top of the list.
That
being said, the boys from LaSalle were an interesting contender in their own
right. The Explorers had joined the PIAA a year earlier and immediately made
their presence felt. They upset North Allegheny and a slew of District One
powerhouses to grab the silvers in Hershey. They had a brilliant 24 second
spread, the tightest of the field, and showcased just how dangerous the PCL was
at peaking at the right time. LaSalle returned five of their top 7 including
#1, #3 and #4.
After
North Allegheny’s recent success on the state level, the WPIAL was beginning to
be seen as a much bigger threat in the team title landscape than they had been
in the half decade prior. Milesplit’s preseason rankings put two District 7
teams in the top 10 overall. The top school? That honor belonged to North Hills
who returned 4 runners with the potential to place in at least the top 50 of
the state. Rising juniors Joe Kush and Juris Silenieks had each placed in the top
50 of the state as a freshman and had the talent to make noise after a somewhat
disappointing sophomore campaign.
But
when the season began, a completely new school was the first team to really
make a dent in the rankings. The boys from Altoona in District 6 had placed 13th
at states in 2008. Their District, District 6, had had little to no impact on
the state title scene, both individually and team wise for quite some time.
Programs like State College and Altoona were historically great, but had been
buried in the standings behind D1, D3 and D7. However, Altoona, with a core led
by sophomore state medalist Wade Endress, pulled out victories at Big Valley
and Slippery Rock (they won this invite 36 to 118) and put the rest of Pennsylvania
on notice.
Meanwhile,
the WPIAL was providing its own shake up in the rankings. Preseason favorites
North Hills took 5-7-9 at RWB, but looked to be missing the firepower at 4-5 to
be state title contenders and, therefore, had to settle for 6th
overall in their first invite. The other preseason ranked team, North
Allegheny, looked stronger at RWB. Their top two returners, Ryan Gil and Eric
Balaban, looked confident and capable with 3rd and 13th
place finishes in their opener. The pack showed some potential as well with
five runners in the top 30 overall. But NA finished just 2nd in the
team standings. The top team was Baldwin who, after graduating one of their
biggest stars in TJ Hobart, proved they still had some talent on the roster.
They scored 78 points and placed four runners under 16:30 to take the victory.
A week
later LaSalle made their team debut at the Briarwood Invitational. Here, they
defeated the defending state champions in North Penn by almost 100 points and
finished second overall behind West Windsor of New Jersey (who got a 1-2 finish
from Joe and Jim Rosa) by just 6 points. LaSalle’s top 3 runners finished 7th,
9th and 10th overall. For the moment, Henderson stuck to
some short relay invitationals, opening the door from some intense debate on
whether they were still the favorites for the state title.
Compounding
the discussion was a dream match-up scheduled for the Carlisle Invitational. Lasalle
(PTXC #2), Altoona (PTXC #3), Cumberland Valley (#6), North Penn (#7), Hatboro
Horsham and North Allegheny (T-#8) were all scheduled to compete at the
September 26th Invitational to sort out the #1 contender position.
On race day, conditions were excellent and the pace was fast. North Penn’s Brad
Miles ran 15:20 to defeat Rad Gunzenhauser of Mt Lebanon. It was a brilliantly
fast performance and helped lead an unprecedented 8 runners under 16 minutes. Miles
performance along with fellow front runner Sam Bernitt was enough to help
propel North Penn to a solid 7th place finish but they were almost
200 points out of the action out front.
LaSalle
made a big statement victory scoring 89 points with a 16:20 average for their
top 5 runners. They placed 3 in the top 15 scorers and their entire top 7
finished in the top 42 team scorers. Only North Allegheny got their 4th
runner in before LaSalle’s 7th. The battle for second was much
closer with 3 teams separated by just 29 points. Altoona (140) proved their
early season invitational wins were no fluke as they defeated North Allegheny
(151) and Cumberland Valley (169). Altoona had three runners in the top 16
scorers with Wade Endress, Chris Fischer and Mike Harf. Two of their top
returners from 2008, Jordan Liberman and Tyler Lidwell, didn’t even compete
that day. Altoona was definitely for real.
If
Henderson was intimidated by the strong performances at Carlisle, they
certainly didn’t show it in their next invite. They put together a strong 6th
place showing at the Manhattan Invitational and beat the LaSalle explorers by
62 points over the 4k distance. In fact, the next closest PIAA team behind
Henderson was defending state champs Norht Penn, who finished 37 points ahead
of LaSalle after losing by nearly 200 at Carlisle. The difference? Manhattan
was a large race with a ton of talent at the front. LaSalle’s top runner
finished just 38th in team scoring so, despite the fact that they
had a 16 second spread, they couldn’t overcome the 2-5 finish from North Penn’s
Miles and Bernitt. So despite their dominant showing at Carlisle, PTXC dropped
LaSalle all the way down to 9th in the state rankings.
The
ever changing state landscape continued to shuffle as the PA teams entered the
championship season. Henderson won their league title with 31 points, but
Unionville hung tough behind them with an impressive 46 points. Matt Fischer,
the 4:20 miler who had been injured most of the summer, was showing signs that
he was returning to form and junior Glenn Burkhardt was one of the state’s
breakout stars. At Tri States, North Allegheny avenged their early season loss
to Baldwin and eeked out a 66 to 78 victory. Ryan Gil won the individual title
with a 15:38 and helped pull his teammates along nicely: they placed 4 in the top
16 overall. Baldwin, who had 4 in the top 20, had to settle for the silvers
despite a terrific performance. In third place was North Hills. They also
placed 4 in the top 20, but their #5 runner finished 118th overall
and pushed them back to 148 points in total.
Shortly
thereafter, Altoona scored just 16 points at the District 6 Championships for
nearly a perfect score. LaSalle scored 33 points at District 12 after scoring
31 at PCLs with just a 17 second spread. And District 3’s Conrad Weiser won a
second straight district title with just 69 points and 3 in the top 10. After
Henderson and NA won their districts (with North Penn and Baldwin each claiming
second), all the favorites were through to states and everyone looked like they
were peaking at the right time.
Henderson
was probably the favorite coming in, but arguments were made for LaSalle to
pull off the upset. Personally, LaSalle was my pick coming into Hershey (they
were ranked #6 in the PTXC rankings prior to states, #5 out of PIAA teams). I
thought their pack would be enough to get the job done and usurp Henderson in a
tight race. But they would need a strong day from returning state medalist
Tommy O’Kane. He was 25th in the state in 2008, but injuries had led
to an up and down stretch run to his season to date. The sleeper team? Might have
been North Hills. They had placed 4 in the top 20 at WPIALs including #3, 4 and
5. If their 5th could have a decent day in a smaller race (big if I
suppose), they would be right in the mix.
The race
tipped off on November 7th and the first mile was about as wild as
you would have expected. No team was
under 100 points at the mile. The leaders were Altoona with 122 points, but
they held just a 23-point advantage and all the big name schools were right
with them. 7 teams sat under 190 points including the defending state champs in
North Penn. Baldwin, LaSalle, Henderson and North Allegheny were teams 2-5.
LaSalle had the best pack, while North Allegheny had just one runner in the top
38 scorers.
At the
two mile mark, the picture was, in some ways, clearer. North Penn and Conrad
Weiser had fallen out of contention after ambitious first miles. Now just 5
teams resides under 200 points. But it was incredibly tight. LaSalle had the lead
with 131 points, but Altoona was just 3 points back, NA was 8 points back and
Henderson was 9 back. Baldwin was in 5th and still had a shot to
close the gap, sitting with 158 points. Unionville had climbed from 12th
to 6th and was closing down, but they were likely to run out of real
estate.
LaSalle
had just one runner in the top 30 overall, but their scoring 5 was separated by
just 14 seconds. Altoona could boast two runners in the top 11 overall and had
three in the top 24 of team scoring. All they needed was a close from their 5th
spot. They had sophomores at #4 and #5 including the extremely talented Korey
Replogle. If either of the sophomores stepped up, they could erase the 3-point
disadvantage.
For
North Allegheny, Henderson and Baldwin, although the deficit was small, the
path to victory was not easy. They would have to jump at least two teams and
make big moves at the 3, 4 and 5 spots to get back in contention. Henderson had
just two runners in the top 60 overall and NA had just one in the top 45.
Over the
final mile, each team battled tooth and nail for every point. As the runners
filtered through the shoot, fans frantically tried to count places. LaSalle’s
pack stayed tight all the way through to the finish as they kept just a 15
second spread. No one else in the top 10 teams was under 53 seconds. It seemed
for a moment that may have been enough. But it wasn’t. When the points were
tallied, it was revealed that LaSalle finished 3rd overall in the
team standings and was just off the podium. They had 137 points and were jumped
by two teams who had 128 and 119.
Altoona,
who had been in the mix for the title throughout, was not one of those teams.
They crossed with 141 total points. Although their talented sophomores Reade
and Replogle made some moves through the field on the final mile, Senior Mike
Harf struggled back to the #6 spot. Wade Endress also slipped a couple points
back after being in the top 10 for much of the race.
The big
movers were Henderson and North Allegheny. Senior Luke Badaczewski of the
Tigers had been running in the #2 spot for much of the race. He wasn’t
typically in this spot, but he ran a gutsy race to try and help his team reach
the podium. Luke faded just a bit on the last mile, but he pulled plenty of teammates
with him. Eric Balaban, a varsity member of the team’s national qualifying
squad from a year earlier, moved from 54th to 38th in the
final mile and dragged Jay Cadwallader to 44th and Mike Smolinski to
33rd. With a low stick out front in Gil who scored just 2 team
points, 20 less than LaSalle’s #1, NA was able to stun their way to the silver.
It was their best finish of the past 3 seasons for perhaps their least
critically acclaimed team.
That
meant Henderson ended up with the title. They went from 140 to 119 over the final
mile and jumped 3 excellent teams to get the gold. It was a truly incredibly
race. Senior and #2 runner Achraf Khattabi actually faded ever so slightly over
the final mile, but Henderson’s #3, 4 and 5 had one of the best finishes of any
team in the history of the state championship. Stash Grab, Austin Stecklair and
Bryan Andrews were all right next to each other at two miles, sitting at 63rd,
64th, and 65th. With the pressure on, Andrews moved to 43rd
overall, Grab to 46th and Stecklair to 59th which was
just enough to defeat their rivals.
And get
this. Andrews finished less than a second ahead of Cadwallader for NA. Grab finished
5 seconds ahead of Smolinski and Stecklair finished just one second ahead of
Badaczewski. Those were critical passes against an important jersey.
Baldwin
and Unionville finished 5th and 6th, both scoring under
200 points. With 6 teams under 200 and such a tight finish throughout the race,
the 2009 state championship was one of the deepest in state history. And the
results are quite shocking. LaSalle, who had their entire top 5 in the top 54
overall finishers is perhaps the only team in recent history to place 5 in the top
54 and finish completely off the podium. The fact that the field was so deep
likely hurt them most of all. In 2009, Brendan Stone finished 54th
overall and was the 34th team scorer. In 2010, Matt Groff was 58th
overall and was the 30th team scorer. It doesn’t sound like much,
but it adds up quickly, especially in a tight race. If you compare 2009 to
2010, LaSalle’s performance was worth about 115 points in 2010 just from the difference
in team scoring vs. overall scoring. Plus, they didn’t have a front runner.
North Hills finished with 3 in front of their #1 meaning they would have lost
to NH in a typical dual meet format even though NH finished well back of them
in the team standings (NH finished 8th with 263 points, 149 of which
came from their #5 and 81 came from their #4).
Ironically
the 2009 LaSalle and North Hills squads are two of the most fascinating teams
of the past decade. To me at least. When you look at the results of the race at
a glance, it’s crazy to me that the school’s finished in the order they did.
Until I add up the numbers and see for myself. It’s pretty incredible.
Of
course, perhaps the craziest thing about the 2009 State Championship is that
the best team was not there. In 2009, Germantown Friends was PA’s best school.
However, they were not in the PIAA and did not participate in the state
championships at Hershey. They did however, defeat essentially all of PA’s best
squads at the NXNE Regional championships and finish 2nd overall in the
region, qualifying for the National Championships. GFS also defeated Henderson
(by 5 points), LaSalle and North Penn at the Manhattan Invitational and
controlled the #1 spot in the PTXC rankings for most of the 2009 season.
Although
they dominated the independent league (five in the top 9 overall), we didn’t
get to see them at their peak vs. most other squad’s peak (Henderson was the
top PIAA school in 8th, followed by Altoona in 10th, LaSalle
in 11th and Baldwin in 14th). We got robbed I’m afraid. And
so we will remember Henderson as the 2009 state champions instead of GFS. If
only we had a meet of champs of some kind …
Small final ammendum here. The fall
of 2009 was my senior season in high school so I knew a lot of these guys
pretty well. I ran with many of the LaSalle guys in my St. Alphonsus days (well
sort of, they were all way faster than me) so I probably had a soft spot for
that squad. I ended up playing volleyball with some of the LaSalle guys and
some of the North Penn guys over the summer. Miles was just as good at
volleyball as running.
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