The Conductor Speaks: Week Four (Part One)

by Jarrett Felix

As per usual, I’m doing recaps in two parts. This one will be strictly Foundation and Carlisle. Feel free to jump around as this is a long one even with only two meets to discuss.

Small side note: two excellent results sites for these meets. Good format, easy to read, results posted almost right away. Love it.

Foundation

A

During a weekend where so much was thrown up for grabs in the team title discussions around the state, the boys from Winchester Thurston made a massive statement about their own gold medal odds. WT dominated at Foundation with just 43 points and a 1-2-3 finish in the team standings (Ryan Thrush of Brookville finished 3^rd, but didn’t count towards team scoring). They also had the 18^th, 19^th and 23^rd finishers in the team standings (giving them some extra depth). They defeated a strong pack from Southern Columbia (the silver medalists) by 88 points and had an average time of 17:11 which was 66 faster than the next best marks. Wow.

I think some of the other best teams in the state may not have been in attendance (Sewickley, Elk County Catholic, Seneca), but still this was an impressive runaway. It will be interesting to see how the other schools develop as contenders for medals come states. 2^nd through 8^th all scored under 200 points with just 11 points between 2^nd place and 4^th (Cranberry).

Tristan Forsythe picked up the victory by 11 seconds over teammate Ben Littman. Both were state medalists a year ago. Ryan Thrush, the reigning 400 meter state cham in AA, finished 3^rd overall at 16:54 (10 seconds back of Littman). It’s great to see Shaun Hay back healthy for WT (he finished 4^th). Sam Lander of Cranberry rounded out the top five overall. Outside of that top five, a couple strong performances came from district one’s Tim Kennel and Jack Miller who placed 7^th and 8^th. Behind Forsythe, were five straight seniors, but then the next senior didn’t cross the line until Harrison Keenan at #12 overall.

Keep an eye on the 13^th finisher from this race, South Side’s Brandon Anglemyer. He had a terrific track season at the mid-distances and could potentially surprise some people on courses a bit more compatible with his speed.

AA

For the second straight year, York Suburban has won the Foundation championships. This year, they defeated the defending state champions in Dallas, who knocked them off last fall. YS didn’t have any top 10 finishers, but they used a tight 32 second spread to defeat Dallas with 6 runners ahead of the district 2 squad’s #5. However, York’s biggest challenge actually came from Greensburg Salem, who left the meet with a narrow silver medal. Greensburg Salem put 3 runners ahead of York’s #1, but they couldn’t quite defeat that excellent pack. When the final standings were tallied, YS scored 116, GS 120 and Dallas 128.

The results really throw the state title race into flux as the defending champs, who returned basically everybody, will now have to rally back for an upset at states yet again. I still am not ready to completely count out the boys from Grove City from making a bit of a surge (they finished 5^th with 186), District One always contends (HG Prep was 4^th with 182) and South Fayette, Wyomissing and Knoch have a lot of talent, especially out front. So they could add extra intrigue to the three-way rematch at Hershey.

Greensburg Salem has a monster top 3 that could potentially include 3 state medalists. Frankie King was the team’s #1 for the first time this season and placed 5^th overall. Then Mark Brown and Cameron Binda, a pair of sophs, finished 10^th and 12^th (11^th and 13^th overall). Brown has been a beast this season and ran right with Tristan Forsythe at RWB (Forsythe ended up cruising to a 16:33 at Hershey, while Brown ran 17:04) so I think the next time he comes out to Hershey, he will drop a lot of time (maybe went out a touch too fast this time around). And Binda is quickly coming on and moving back up into the position he was a year ago, right with the other two stand outs. He moved up about 13 spots in the second half of the race while their 4^th and 5^th runners moved up roughly 50 combined spots. The 4-5 was really the key to competing for the win and included a monster run from sophomore Dylan Binda. There’s a roughly 100 point drop off from 5 to 6 so GS will need to really be firing on all cylinders to contend, but they have some monster pieces. They were just 2 seconds off the win this weekend which is practically nothing.

Dallas was out pretty hard on the course and ended up paying the price for it at the race’s conclusion (they also only had 6 finishers), but this team lost this meet last year to York Suburban, so there’s still plenty of time to mount a comeback. Jack Zardecki led the team with an 8^th place overall finish. Now we will see if anyone can step up as a top 30 type finisher in the #2 spot like Adam Borton was a year ago.

By the way, just for fun, York Suburban and Dallas each will return 6 of their top 7 next year with Greensburg returning five of seven. Grove City and Holy Ghost Prep are loaded with seniors in the top 5 (HG Prep has 6 of 7 seniors) so they will have a little more urgency down the stretch.

Individually, Isaac Davis ran away from everyone for the victory with a 16:21. He dominated from start to finish with a front running performance for yet another win. Davis looks awesome to start the year and will be among the state title favorites in AA. Wyomissing’s Joe Cullen, however, is a very intriguing wild card. The junior made up a lot of ground as the race progressed and worked his way all the way up to 2^nd by outkicking Aaron Pfiel of South Fayette using that 1:54 800 speed.

Sophomore Jonah Powell won the highly anticipated match-up for the class of 2019, finishing 4^th overall in 16:38. Anthony Harper of Bonner put in a really strong finish for 12^th overall in 17:04. Also worth noting was frosh Ben Kuhn in 28^th. Keep an eye on Jarrett Raudensky of York Suburban. He was 27^th today with a big second half surge. I’ve heard he’s coming off injury and, considering his freshman campaign, if he’s back to full strength in the coming weeks, he’s a real medal contender down the stretch.

AAA

Man how quickly things can change. Just a week after O’Hara defeated Indian Hills and LaSalle at Briarwood, LaSalle flipped the script and opened up a 96-171 advantage over O’Hara to take a runaway victory at Foundation. LaSalle hung tough out front with 3 in the top 20, but really brought it home thanks to a 27^th and 35^th place finish by their #4 and #5 runners Greg Galbreath and Quinn O’Neill. LaSalle’s #5 was faster than everyone else’s #4 (even the ultra-tight spread of North Allegheny), but they also had the best #3 of the field with Brendan Price having another strong performance. Evan Addison bounced back to be the team’s #1 runner, taking 7^th overall.

O’Hara barely held onto the 2^nd spot, just edging out Seneca Valley of the WPIAL by 2 points. Patrick James slipped a little bit from Gavin Inglis’s shoulder compared to the previous week and the gap to the #4 and #5 runners opened things up a bit as well. I still think these two PCL teams are fairly evenly matched and will have some more close battles to come looking ahead. This meet featured 35 teams in total and the state meet will have closer to 20 so this meet was actually bigger than what we will see come states. However, the state championship will also be more front-loaded.

Seneca Valley was perhaps the story of the meet as they defeated North Allegheny and Mount Lebanon, both teams that defeated them at RWB. Part of the reason for the surge was the great race of Seth Ketler. The sophomore finished 18^th overall. His runningmate, fellow soph Sam Owori took 9^th and Trey Razauskus took 26^th. Trey is the lone senior on the team’s top 7. A big flip from the PCL teams which each have 6 seniors and a junior in their varsity 7.

North Allegheny finished just 8 points back of their WPIAL rivals, despite the fact their top runner was 32^nd. It’s another absurd spread from the Tigers (about 9 seconds) and another new front runner as freshman Daniel McGoey jumps all the way up to the #1 spot after finishing outside the scoring five a week ago. That’s 3 different #1’s and three straight weeks with single digit spreads. It’s amazing to me that these guys can all finish so packed together in such big races. I don’t think most teams could do that even if they specifically tried to finish together.

As mentioned, Mt Lebo was 5^th. Their #1 runner was just 20^th so Seneca Valley had 2 runners in front of their low stick as well. But Bryce was up there and under 17 on the new lay out, having another strong showing. Their pack looks solid, even if not quite as tight at NA’s.

My pre-race pick for the win, Spring Ford, ended up in 6^th place, just 4 points away from Lebo. They ran without Zach Smith (who raced last weekend) and had a tight pack but, like NA, couldn’t move up the standings without a front runner. I’m still high on this team as a contender and they were still the #1 team from District One in the meet by a decent margin. Let’s see if they can develop a low stick that will drag the pack up the standings. The ultra young CB East team was 7^th overall, led by David Endres in 25^th.

We still don’t know quite how different this year’s edition of the Hershey course is when compared to the old one (I’m working on a post about it thanks to some of your feedback, keep it coming!), but seeing a time that starts with “15” on the Hershey hills really catches your eye. Ryan James had the fastest time of the day with a big 15:58 for the wire to wire victory. He defeated a strong pack of medal contenders that included Connor McMenamin (16:03), Liam Conway (16:16) and Nick Feffer (16:24). McMenamin had a monster bounce back race in his rematch with Conway and had easily his best race ever on the Hershey hills. The longer distance specialists in James and McMenamin managed to use that strength to hang on against speedsters Conway and Feffer in a thrilling battle. Congrats to James who, for at least a month, can say he holds the Hershey course record …

I was very impressed by James’s victory, but I was more impressed by Gavin Inglis’s excellent run in 5^th. He ran a smart first half of the race and nearly caught Feffer over the final piece of the race, finishing just 4 seconds back of the 2015 state medalist. This is now back to back top 5 finishes from Inglis who seems like a real medal contender for O’Hara. They can continue their multi-medalist streak for another year if the continues on this pace.

Matt D’Aquila of Lower Merion ran strong in his debut, finishing 6^th and Eric Kersten of Pennsbury ran an extremely impressive race of his own to finish 8^th. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Kersten, who showed flashes of brilliance and fearlessness last season, but he looks great so far. Don’t forget he split about 1:55 on the lead of leg for the states 4x8 in 2015.

As mentioned, Seneca Valley had the top 2 sophomores in the race in Owori and Ketler while Fox Chapel held the #1 frosh in Christian Fitch. He was followed closely by Daniel McGoey of NA as they each ran 17:04. Also shout out to a couple teammates who have not been getting as much time in the spotlight this season. Gabe Sullivan of Pleasant Valley and Tayvonne Davis of Allerdice have been a bit in the shadow of their top 50 teammates, but both ran powerful second halves at Hershey this weekend to finish side by side with Seth Slavin (12-13) and Amadou Diallo (14-13).

For the record, NA and LaSalle took 1-2 in a fiercely contested JV race. Cam Phillips won for the tigers, but freshman Vincent Twomey and Ethan Maher for LaSalle took #2 and #3 positions. Both teams are crazy keep with tight packs. Lots to be excited about at both schools.

Carlisle Invitational

Champions Race

Nate Romberger of Red Land threw down a monster performance for the victory with a 16:05. That’s a really fast time for this course and puts Romberger on the ever growing list of District 3 stand outs. This race follows a silver medal performance behind Joe Cullen at the PTXC Blue race. Finishing in 3^rd place was Austin Maxwell of Kennent, the second PA runner to cross the line.

The out of state squads did real damage in this race, but Palmyra held their own with a 3^rd place finish and a strong 27 second spread (6 seconds 2-5). Matt Carroll led the way with a 14^th place finish. He’s just a freshman.

Challenge Race

So after 23 paragraphs you finally made it here. Or maybe you just skipped straight down to here. Probably the second one. But still, let’s talk about this unreal race. Noah Affolder of Carlisle and Nate Henderson of JP McCaskey led an incredible 21 guys under 16 minutes for 5k at the course. And they did it with a pair of sub 15 times! Noah Affolder ran an incredible 14:47 and Henderson, pushing himself behind him, dropped a 14:59.

Based on everything I’ve read and heard from people, this was the same Carlisle course of old. But you can tell right from the beginning, the day was running really fast. The freshman and JV races were producing some monster times (16:30s to win the JV race?) based on what I could see from the live results (shout to runccrs for the hookup), I was really tempted to tweet out a prediction for a sub 15 time for Noah. I was thinking he would end up between 14:57 and 14:59. But 14:47 is unreal. That’s 30 seconds faster than Kyle Dawson and 33 faster than Brad Miles of North Penn, who won Footlocker Regionals in 2009.

But, of course, Noah has already won Footlocker Regionals, a year ago over all-time great Jake Brophy and has already run 8:48 for 3200m. This is the kind of talent we haven’t had before and so the times are pretty jaw dropping. This is the kinda guy who could potentially win Footlocker Nationals at the end of the year and will be almost impossible to stop by states. His brother is pretty good as well as he ran 15:17 for top sophomore honors and 3^rd place overall. Up until today, 15:17 would have tied him for the fastest PA time in the last 11 years. And he’s just a sophomore. That 1-2 punch for Carlisle really helped in the team standings. But we will get to that.

Nate Henderson’s time has to get a lot of love here. 14:58 on this course is crazy fast and has to make Henderson a favorite to head to Footlocker and maybe even challenge for a top 10 spot if he gets there. He’s got to hold this momentum going forward, but he’s a tough, gutsy kid who doesn’t really care who he is racing (as we saw at Penn Relays). Hopefully, he’s got something in the tank come November and December after dropping two monster performances already this year.

Josh Hoey, Kyler Shea and Morgan Cupp rounded out the top 6 PA finishers (yes that’s 5 district 3 guys). I’ll brag here and say that I predicted this order exactly (sorry, I missed on lots of other stuff so I had to try and redeem myself), but the times were super fast. I thought Cupp was capable of something in the 15:40s, but a 15:40 exactly for him and a sub 15:40 for Shea are both excellent. Even Hoey’s time of 15:37 is fantastic for this course and 3 seconds faster than he was last year (when he was 3^rd in the state). For reference, Aaron Gebhart ran 15:37 here as a junior, Zach Seiger ran 15:40 as a junior and Nate Henderson ran 15:41 as a junior. Vince McNally ran 15:42 as a junior and Ryan Gil ran 15:46. Those guys are older, but I encourage you to look them up. They’re pretty darn good.

It was a day for massive performances from Top 3s. Carlisle’s steals the show as the Affolders claimed 1-3 for PA and then Issac Kole dropped a fantastic 15:50. That was 13^th overall and 8^th among PA runners. However, it’s worth noting that Lower Dauphin, also from District 3 and much less heralded so far this season, pulled out a 15:39 (Shea), a 15:47 (Colton Cassell, had a huge day) and a 15:52 (Jared Giannascoli) to put 3 guys in the top 15 overall for their own squad. They proved the Big Spring invite was no fluke performance and also proved they might be able to contend for … the team title at states (I’m hoping for a gasp there, but probably not actually getting one).

That’s the thing, the team title race is way up for grabs. Carlisle finished as PA’s top team (again), but they were only 10 points ahead of Downingtown West. The boy’s from West (AKA the defending state champions) had two runners under 16 of their own (Shaun Bullock and a huge ran from Drew Alansky) plus another at 16:02. Ryan Barton (38^th) and Patrick Blair (52^nd) rounded out the top 5 for West who put 6 guys in ahead of Carlisle’s #5. Their 42 second spread was best of the top teams and, although they don’t have front running to match Carlisle or LD (each team put 3 in ahead of West’s #1), you have to admire their incredible depth. They had the top Pa runner in the JV race (16:34 from junior Tyler Rolllins would have been #5 for West in the varsity race and picked up a couple extra points) as well as 4 guys at 17:05 or faster. Then their freshman team won the team title with two guys at 17:11.

I know only five guys will count come states, but man it’s gotta be nice to have an army. Their team is huge and they are loaded with guys who can come out and produce if called into duty. That gives them so flexibility that a lot of teams at the top don’t necessarily have. I talked about the power of being defending champs at the beginning of the year, and it definitely seems like West is flexing their muscle early. But can they produce the front running need to win?

I have to say Lower Dauphin’s #4 and #5 really impressed me. 16:45 from Mark Walsh for 60^th was a monster performance which kept these guys in it. They finished just 17 points back of DT West and 27 back of Carlisle. But Hempfield is right in it, debuting with 195 points to LD’s 168. They had a sub 16 performer in Nick Norton and are two time defending district champs. Mechanicsburg has a nasty top 3, increasing to top 4 as Michael Vigliano continues to impress. Alex Tomasko joined Morgan Cupp in the 15s for this squad. They scored 202. Cumby scored 216 (without their #5 finishing in Schulz) and Manheim Central scored 279 (102 from their #5) with a tight pack 1-4. Hershey (without Mike Morris) scored 290 as well and Andew Sullivan steps up into a front runner.

I mean, I just don’t know what to say other than wow. Only 4 District 3 teams can go to states and last year none of the 4 teams that went finished in the top 10. So what the heck is going to happen this year? Sometimes teams just rise to the occasion. The Affolders come here, Carlisle makes a big leap and the other programs follow. It’s awesome to see.

That’s the thing, right now everyone is stepping their game up to match the other top programs. The state championship is really wide open right now on the team side. I’d say at least as many as 10 teams could still win the title and maybe more considering we’ve seen crazy upsets in the past (i.e. 2011 North Penn). Each team has a noteworthy strength, but each team has its fair share of weaknesses.

Guys, things are getting good. Don’t touch that dial!