The Conductor Speaks: Week Two (Part 1)

by Jarrett Felix

Well I won't lie to you, there were a ton of meets this weekend and there's a lot to talk about. But you know, I'll give this weekend recap thing a shot because I like you guys. Let's not waste any more time. Here is Part 1 of my weekend recap. The other meets will be coming later tonight/tomorrow.

PTXC
Let's start here because Dan Beck and I are going head to head in fantasy football right now which reminded me of Penntrack's signature meet (side note: how could would he be to have an etrain meet? probably never going to have a meet but maybe a section of a race or something ...). Also, it was a good one.

Gold Race
The Carlisle boys targeted this meet to make a statement against many of PA's best schools. They also got all they could handle from Virginia's Loudon Valley (AKA Andrew Hunter's old team) and a group of three juniors and two sophomores. Carlisle's top 4 were as good as advertised, led by the older New Yorkers Noah and Sam Affolder. Noah ran away with the individual title, winning by eight seconds. Sam, just a sophomore, finished third overall and second from PA, just missing a 1-2 finish for Carlisle. If you are only counting PA runners Carlisle took 1-2-8-20 with their top 4 runners. I love the way Isaac Kole has been getting after it this season. He had a terrific spring and definitely looks like a state medal contender. Jack Wisner, 1:51 and XC state medalist Matt Wisner's young brother, was PA's #2 sophomore overall behind his teammate Sam Affolder. Not too shabby.

The team's five spot ended up costing them a bit in the race for gold (decided by just 4 points) as their #5 was 43rd and LV's was 29th in team scoring. That being said, Carlisle's #5 runner (senior Tyler Hallman) had a really strong race and actually finished ahead of the #5 runner for Cumberland Valley, Mechanicsburg, Dallas and Hershey (the other top PA teams). CRN, who will need a tough pack to beat Carlisle come states, had a #5 just 13 seconds and 5 places ahead of Hallman. When you consider the upset for Max Fiorentino (he's done some solid work as the team's #5 in early meets), you have some very capable options in that spot. I like what I saw from the Herd.

PA's #3 finisher was Souderton's Connor McMenamin who took 6th overall in 16:21. Connor is not afraid of a fast pace and mixed it up well with the front of this field. He missed this past spring track season, so his best may still be coming looking ahead. He will certainly contend for a top 5 spot at districts and perhaps top 3 (District One). Seth Slavin from Pleasant Valley, Morgan Cupp and Alex Tomasko from Mechanicsburg and Bryan Keller of CRN also earned top 10 overall finishes for PA. All these guys were in my preseason top 50, so although none of them are big surprises, Tomasko and Keller earned places on the list because of their big jumps on the track. Excellent sign in race one that those jumps are translating.

Gabe Sullivan who finished side by side with Kole was one of the bigger surprises in PA's top 10. Sullivan is a senior at Pleasant Valley (team's with the indoor 3k state medalist Slavin) and has rapidly improved as his training partner. Sullivan was a quiet 5th at the District 11 XC Champs last year and continues to be a name on the rise in 2016. Slavin and Sullivan could potentially take 1-2 at districts later this year if the Parkland boys don't have something to say about it.

Also worth mentioning, strong race from Quinn Serfass as an unattached athlete (he finished 17th overall just behind Dallas's top runner Jack Zardecki). Serfass runs for Loyalsock in District 4 A and finished 2nd at districts there a year ago. He finished 31st at states last fall as just a sophomore despite a very conservative 5:07 first mile (for comparison the only guys to finish ahead of him but go out at a slower pace were all wearing Camp Hill jerseys). I also was impressed by Andrew Sullivan of Hershey who finished as his team's #1 runner. He didn't compete in XC a year ago but ran low 4:20s on the track. Hershey, once again, will boast a nice pack and they should have sophomore Mike Morris come on late in the season as he did a year ago (top 20 at districts as a frosh). Hershey finished 8th in the team standings and #5 out of AAA PIAA schools.

Speaking of teams, it was a bit of a tight battle for second in the PA team scoring race. CR North defeated Cumberland Valley by 21. I talked about Cumby as a potential sleeper pick in what is quickly becoming a loaded AAA race. I called a breakout season for Josh Higgins prior to the 2015 season, but maybe I was a year early. He and the super talented Soliman (sub 16 two years ago, top 10 in the district last year), plus the reliable workhorse Andrew Brown make a nice trio up front. This program usually develops packs nicely and I expect them to factor into the top 10 mix for states. Carlisle, however, has a solid 60 point advantage right now in the district title race.

CRN usually comes on strong late. It's just their style. So when you think about it, this is a very nice performance. Bryan Keller looks like he has the potential to be in the state medalist conversation and there are definitely pieces to put together for a strong pack. Tim Haas didn't get a lot of preseason play here on the blog, but he's been a varsity member for 4 years and is very consistent on the trails. He was top 20 in team scoring in his first race of the year.

I really like what we saw from Mechanicsburg as well. They finished as PA's 4th best team and held their own against Cumberland Valley (33 points back) and AA state champs Dallas (18 points ahead). Tomasko and Cupp are monsters, but #4 man Michael Bigliano (sophomore) finished in 48th place overall with a 17:44 and was the key reason Mechanicsburg was in the mix out front. Watch out for Andrew Sulon and Brendan Knepper in the coming weeks to help round out the top 5. They've definitely got a shot at a state qualifying birth (although D3 has an interesting contingent to contend with).

Blue Race
Joe Cullen led the way for Wyomissing with a monster win. He ran 16:41 to win by 15 seconds and likely would have been a factor in the top 8 or so for the Gold race. Wyomissing runs in AA District 3 and Cullen (who finished 11th at districts last year), asserts himself as the early favorite to defend Jack DiCintio's crown for Wyomissing. Cullen split 1:54 on the track, ran in the mid to low 4:20s for 1600 and now comes out of the gate much stronger than a year ago. I think this guy could do big things this season.

Speaking of big things, don't expect York Suburban, AA state runner ups a year ago, to relinquish their titles quickly. They had a tough battle with Wyomissing in the team standings (76 to 83), but pulled out the win with a better pack. If Raudensky continues to improve (just a sophomore, but was 8th in the district as a frosh), they will have a very good pack and will once again contend for state gold, even against Dallas.

A few other things I liked: Nate Romberger of Red Land really impressed me with his runner up finish. He was 105th at districts last year, but he learned a lot under state medalists Zach Seiger and Drew Wilkinson. This strong Red Land program appears to continue to churn out studs. Casey Ellis of NEB, as a A runner, performed very well with a 4th place overall finish for Bradford. And, although it wasn't PA, did Loudon Valley's JV team finish 4th in the Blue Race? With their top guy just 23rd, they packed it up and scored just 148 points. That's pretty impressive.

Red, White and Blue
AAA
We talked about Carlisle. We talked about Council Rock North. Now let's talk about North Allegheny. If you remember in my sleepers post, I mentioned that North Allegheny was my early pick for the state title. Well, they looked pretty strong in week #1 with the oft mentioned 7 second spread. But it is worth noting that the Tigers didn't have much of a front running presence in this race as their top runner was just the 14th person to cross the line.  After leaning on a "big three" for much of 2014 and 2015, the Tigers will go back to the approach they used in 2013 and 2008 and focus on utilizing a monster pack (and those teams were pretty darn good).

Here's what's cool to me about NA. I had lots of different discussions about who could be NA's breakout medalist in 2016 (the Tigers are the only school to have a state medalist each of the past 10 years, and that's including all divisions). Mike Hartigan, TJ Robinson, Zach Dieble, Jacob Greco and their 800 corps all got some love (and they showed up nicely in week 1), but the Tigers #1 runner was Clark Smith, a senior who finished 2nd in the JV race at Foundation a year ago, but didn't make the varsity squad on the silver medal squad. The #2 man was Luke Turkovich, a sophomore who ran 17:42 at Foundation last year in the JV race and was 5th overall. That's listed as his invitational best. The team's top 5 also featured varsity newcomers Daniel McGoey (freshman, may have heard that last name before as Matt McGoey was a WPIAL champ and 8:56 3200 runner) and junior Cam Phillips to go along with Jacob Greco. All five runners finished in the top 25 along with #6 runner TJ Robinson. When you add up the final count, NA had 9 guys in the top 50 overall.

The WPIAL is in a bit of flux this year and it's not clear just how strong the AAA landscape will be relative to the rest of the state. I'm not sure the Tigers are worthy of a #1 state ranking as things currently stand, but if guys can continue to improve (and runners like Robinson and Dieble have shown a real knack for this), it's going to be really fun to watch this pack try and take down the front running monster brewing in Carlisle.

Strong showings also from Mount Lebanon and Seneca Valley in the team race. Lebo loses their top 3 guys from last year and still comes back with a vengeance. I like their start. North Allegheny steals the thunder a lot, but Lebo has been incredibly consistent in recent years. That being said, I think Seneca Valley will give them a nice run for their money this year. They have some strong sophomores, specifically Sam Owri who crushed this race with a 10th place finish overall.

Shout out to District 8's Allerdice. They held their own with the WPIAL squads after holding their own against the District 10 teams last weekend. Diallo could be a medal contender this year after a near top 50 finish last fall.

The AAA WPIAL landscape seemed relatively wide open going into 2016, but it seems Mark Provenzo is ready to take over the throne. He finished 2nd overall with a 16:14 time. Next up from the AAA WPIAL were Casey Conboy (4th in 16:20) and Noah Beveridge from Butler (16:32). But a couple AA runners crashed the party as Zach Skolnekovich and Aaron Pfiel finished 1st and 3rd in this one. Zach has won the WPIAL AA crown the past two seasons and finished with the silver at states last year (he was my personal pick for gold). The guy is a natural cross runner who is coming off easily his best track season where he really worked on his speed. Pfiel is no joke either and, assuming South Fayette didn't switch divisions, he (and perhaps teammate Sam Snodgrass who was 12th today) are top 5 contenders at AA states.

Some other notable marks came from Christian Fitch of Fox Chapel (finished 11th overall and is just a frosh) and Adam Cook (also Fox Chapel, placed 15th). They helped FC finish in 6th overall. This program has seen its fair share of top 50 state finishers (most notably the Martin twins but also Weis and Graca) so maybe one of these guys will go on a tear this year.

AA-A
Winchester Thurston is doing it again. Every year they seem to find five guys who are very capable XC guys. Usually, it's exactly five guys, no more, no less. But all you need is five guys as they proved when everything came together in 2014 for their state title run. After posting 3 medalists in 2015, they lost their best runner in Will Loevner, but Tristan Forsythe and Ben Littman seem ready to pick up the slack. Meanwhile, Gordon Pollock, who has been a varsity member since his freshman year, keeps getting stronger and stronger ever year. He used to be a 19 minute guy, now he's running 17:40 in the opening meet and placing 13th overall. Throw in a healthy Shaun Hay (he's had health issues, but when he's healthy he's a beast) who was 7th and a new potential star freshman (Sean Heintzleman who finished 17th) and you have a dominant showing in week one. With Sewickly MIA, WT won the AA/A race over AA Greensburg Salem by 36 points ... with a score of 36 points.

Tristan Forsythe, now a junior, picked up the overall win with a time of 16:20, just edging out the up and coming sophomore from Greensburg Salem, Mark Brown. GS has their own very capable top 3 as they had Frankie King (8th) and Cameron Binda (14th) up in the mix out front. They will be a very compelling team in the AA title race. I like Forsythe as a title contender this year in A. That may be bold (Curtin, Walsh, Mackey, Clouse, Crawley, the Myers twins are all in this class), but I think this kid has a ton of talent (great miler) and is gutsy (he's not a afraid to follow a fast early pace).

Elk County Catholic is another interesting team with a killer top three. Logan Hoffman and Zach Wortman took 5th and 6th overall while Matt Dippold finished 15th. These three guys were their top 3 a year ago when they placed 6th at A states, but they didn't have anyone better than 20 in team scoring (Wortman led the way in 35th with the other two guys at 50th and 52nd overall). That could change this year and with a talented frosh in the equation (Ben Hoffman was 26th) they look like a contender.

Also impressing in this field were Ben Heim (1:55 800 this past spring, 4th overall), Jarrett Boyd (not only a great name, but also a talented track star, was 9th in this race) and Brandon Anglemyer (10th, another great track guy). Those guys edged out some quality state medalists in Chris Kocent (11th) and Ben Barnes (12th).