Friday Feature: PCL Debuts

By Jarrett Felix

            Since the PCL was added to the PIAA in 2008, they have been guaranteed a total of 14 AAA team qualifiers at the cross country state championship. In that time, they have produced 15 top 10 teams. For those of you who aren’t doing the math at home, that’s 107%. In other words, every year the District 12 qualifier(s) finishes in the top 10 teams and, in 2012, when they were only guaranteed one spot, LaSalle made it to states by taking all five individual places. And then, with just five runners, finished 5^th at states. As Professor Quirrell would say, “What is this magic?!”

            In 2008 and 2009, the automatic qualifiers were LaSalle and St. Joe’s Prep, but since then it’s been all Cardinal O’Hara and LaSalle, two teams that will make their invitational debut at the Briarwood Invitational this coming weekend. In 7 trips to Hershey, LaSalle has averaged a little better than 6^th place. In 7 trips to Hershey, O’Hara has averaged about 5^th place. However, if you remove their 18^th place finish in 2009 (they, like LaSalle, qualified by getting five individual spots to states and the PCL sent three teams!), they’ve averaged about 3^rd place. That’s nuts. Both are projected to be top 10 teams again in 2016 and return a strong contingent from 4^th and 6^th place finishes a year ago.

            LaSalle has been ranked as high as the #1 spot depending on who you ask (shout out to our anonymous commenter for the rankings) and, after producing a varsity squad with seven guys under seventeen at Hershey, it’s easy to see what’s to like. They are (if you will excuse my language, catholic schools) a gosh darn army. Seriously, where do they all come from? LaSalle just shows up to that random indoor meet at Haverford and throws down with like 20 sub 5 minute guys.

            On the other hand, I wouldn’t quite describe O’Hara as an “army”. Probably more like Wolverine from X-Men. You think they’re wounded and then they just magically recover just as strong as ever. Just before states last fall, O’Hara seemed like a borderline top 10 team at best. Then they came out and got 6^th, knocking on the doors of 5^th. Then, just in case you were still skeptical, they won indoor states in the DMR. Somebody may want to check Coach Kennedy for claws.

            The rivalry between these two teams renews at the Briarwood Invitational this coming weekend and we will finally get to see where the army and Wolverine stack up in the team rankings. I’m particularly interested to see this result as I have no clue how strong I think either team will be this year. There’s a reason I left all the teams without invite experience of my first edition of the list and it wasn’t so much about fairness as it was about avoiding wild speculation that could make me look bad in the long run.

            But as much as Briarwood is about history and tradition and rivalry and all the stuff knights of the round table might have been into, we can’t forget about the defending champions. Yes, Central Bucks West, who finished 3^rd at the state championships a year ago, is on the registered entrants list to return to Belmont Plateau for a rematch with the PCL and their own rivals, Central Bucks East. And just like LaSalle and O’Hara, CB West has yet to race an invitational yet and determine their place on the team rankings.

            West loses their top two runners from states a year ago, both of whom finished in the medals. But they do have a nice group of returners including top 50 finisher Ben Smullen plus 3200m stand outs Brian Mass and Ben Bunch. But what was intriguing to me was the fact that Teagan Fortna and Alec Hofer, two of the team’s key pieces in the 4x8, were the top two runners at the recent CBW-Quakertown duel (not to be confused with dual).

            Yet when it comes to directionally named Central Bucks schools, East has been capturing the interest of Pennsylvania much more thoroughly than the (metaphorical) bronze medal winners a year ago. Sophomores David Endres, Sean Lehetta, Cade Sands and Cole Sands have been big parts of East’s climb up the on paper state rankings (did Milesplit say they were #1 the other day?). They are young and, despite two dominant wins, the general consensus is they are unproven. Briarwood will serve as a huge chance to silence the doubters.

            And lastly, we have Council Rock North. The Pilgrims (I decided CRN will now have the team name Pilgrims) looked strong in their opener at PTXC and should be a nice benchmark for the schools who have yet to race a big invite. This team is undeniably strong and has three runners who could be in the mix for a top 5 to 10 finish out front. If they leave Briarwood with a convincing enough win, they will definitely move into my top two overall in the state rankings. On the flip side, all the other teams will likely have North targeted as the school to beat to improve their own state rankings.

            I might be overselling the whole “state rankings” thing, but also I just made my first state ranking post so I’m feeling a little obnoxiously self-promotional.

            Last year, the top 5 teams at this meet were, in order, CB West-LaSalle-CB East-O’Hara-CR North. Those teams finished 3^rd-4^th-8^th-6^th-5^th at states. That’s pretty legit for an early season invitational. Of course, in 2012 the top PA schools from Briarwood finished 2^nd-1^st-3^rd-6^th-(DNQ)-5^th. So the 2016 edition of the meet still has something to chase.

            I won’t hash out an intense individual preview, but here are some guys who are in or around my current XC Top 50 that you may want to keep an eye out for in the various races:

Ryan James, O’Hara (ET #16)

David Endres, CB East (ET #45)

Bryan Keller, CR North (ET #30)

Ryan Campbell, CR North (ET #44)

James Abrahams, Haverford (ET #28)

Callahan Lennon, HG Prep (NR)

Evan Addison, LaSalle (ET #32)

Rusty Kujdych, Neshaminy (ET #9)

Liam Galligan, Springfield (ET #10)

Evan Hutton, William Tennent (NR)

            Sure, that’s not much of a preview, but, to be fair, I am currently drinking a yogurt because I am too lazy to just get up and grab a spoon. So, really, this was kind of impressive.