State Championship Recap: AA Boys

by Jarrett Felix

AA State Championship Recap

The Race

The defending state champions from Dallas knew they would have their hands full with York Suburban and Greensburg Salem who defeated them on this very course a few weeks back. But at the mile, their biggest competition came from a few unlikely sources. Holy Ghost Prep was in second place, followed by South Fayette and then Harbor Creek.

The aforementioned Harbor Creek team was out pretty hard, most notably junior Christian Babo. The Harbor Creek harrier missed the 2015 season, but returned to action this year as mainly the squad’s #3 runner. But he was a freshman medalist at states and had confidence in his ability. Through the mile, Babo was the surprise leader in a blazing fast opening mile of 4:50. That set the tone for the race as you had to get out close to five minutes to be up with the medal contenders. Ben Bumgarner of Waynesburg Central and Isaac Davis of Jersey Shore were also through the mile in 4:50 with Zach Skolenkovich, perhaps the pre-race favorite, just one second back in 4:51. In total, 13 runners ran through the first mile in under 5 minutes. All of them held on quite well and finished as state medalists.

By two miles, having really pushed things through the hills, Ben Bumgarner took over the lead and opened up a small advantage. He had about a three second edge on Zach Skolnekovich of Quaker Valley. Isaac Davis was also hanging tough at the front, running just a second back of Skolnekovich. Those three were well clear of the next group that included David Haines of North Pocono as well as teammates Aaron Pfeil and Sam Snodgrass of South Fayette. Those South Fayette boys were leading the WPIAL 3^rd place finishers to an awesome showing through two miles. While Dallas appeared to have the race in hand, South Fayette was in 2^nd place overall, ahead of York Suburban by 7 points.

Over the final mile, Bumgarner not only held his edge, but expanded upon it. He rolled to a 12 second victory, coming off the final hill with a large advantage that caused some of the fans around me to murmur about how impressive it was. Skolnekovich held on well, moving far ahead of Isaac Davis, but not quite being able to catch Bumgarner. Still, Skolnekovich finishes with a second straight silver medal and an incredible cross country career.

Aaron Pfeil and Sam Snodgrass finished 4^th and 6^th for South Fayette with Haines splitting them in 5^th for North Pocono. York Suburban made a hard push over the final mile, trying to close down against Dallas. One of the most notable moves came from Bryce Ohl. He got out conservative, behind a few of his own teammates event, but after a 5:13 first mile, Ohl moved all the way to 8^th overall, helping negate Dallas’s front running advantage by fitting right alongside Jack Zardecki. Tanner Haynes of YS also made a big final surge all the way to 28^th overall.

However, Dallas was able to hold on against the surges. They finished with four runners between 30^th and 37^th which gave them a tight enough spread behind Zardecki to hold off the challengers. Josh Wayndt had a strong bounce back performance to lead this team as the #2 runner. He threw down a strong surge from mile 1 to 2 and nearly finished as a state medalist in his own right after running outside the scoring 5 for Dallas at the district meet.

Major props to South Fayette in this one. They finished in a tough spot, taking 3^rd overall by just six points, but they really impressed me. After taking 3^rd at their district meet, they finished as the WPIAL’s #1 team and held their own against a pair of super powers in Dallas and YS. Silas Mays had a really strong showing alongside Michael Cusick. These guys ran a fearless race. Lots to be proud of for that school.

Harbor Creek took 4^th overall with an impressive 3 state medalists (who all return next year) and 4 runners in the top 34 overall! They were somewhat reminiscent of Carlisle in AAA with that excellent top four. Props to their freshman Nolan Weber for stepping up to finish as the team’s #5 runner in this one and doing his best to hang close enough to help this team place top 4.

Quaker Valley finished off an excellent stretch run to their season, rounding out the top 5. They scored an impressive 180 points and got a big step up performance from Zeke Gonzalez. Jake Smiley also had an awesome showing, nearly breaking into the medals behind Skolnekovich.

Quick Thoughts

1.      Let’s run this back next year. Yes, 4 of the top 5 finishers will graduate this year, however we have a ton of guys coming back for next season. Dallas returns almost everyone from their state championship squad as does second place York Suburban. 15 of the 25 medalists were either juniors or sophomores (20 of the top 30 as well). In total, last year’s terrific freshman class translated to 11 sophomores in the top 50 with 5 sophomore medalists. That’s wild.

2.      Will see Bumgarner v. Skolnekovich Round 3? Sound like Bumgarner is definitely heading to Footlocker Regionals while Skolnekovich (who has yet to extend his season that far) seems on the fence. I’d love to see both guys go out and compete as it’s the closest thing we get to a meet of champs and these two rivals have made the AA class really fun to watch this year. Can either of them punch a ticket to Footlocker? What about top Nick Wolk’s finish at the meet a year ago?

3.      Awesome performance by the top teams. I was expecting about half of the top 50 to be from team state qualifiers. As a rule of thumb, I feel like that is often the case. But this season, 28 of the top 39 finishers were from state qualifying teams! That made front running super important at this meet which played into the hands of South Fayette and Harbor Creek and actually made things a bit more interesting for Dallas who had a ton of guys mixed in at the inflection point.

4.      Notre Dame XC makes the Notre Dame name proud. District 11’s top team placed 9^th overall. D11 hasn’t had a ton of top 10 teams in recent years, but Notre Dame Green Pond had an excellent showing at states. They were helped in large part by John Koons, a sophomore who placed 25^th overall. This ND GP squad returns six of their top 7 runners for next year as well.

5.      Gutsy front running. The general consensus after this race seemed to be that going out too fast eats you up and spits you out. Well, although there were some first mile casualties, the big names really impressed me with their ability to hang on. All the sub 5 opening milers held on for the medals. Dallas went out hard and held on for the victory. South Fayette ran a gutsy opening stretch and nearly came away with the silver medals. That’s a hard, bold way to run on this course, but you have to respect how they were able to hang on.

#DerailTheTrain

Let’s check in with my predictions and see who proved me wrong. I had a halfway decent showing in this one (got 20 out of 25 medalists), but there was still plenty to rub in my face. Have to give a big shout out to Erik Andrzejewski. The sophomore from General McClane has been on a roll recently and capped off his season as the first finisher from the always competitive District 10. That helped lead his General McClane team to a 6^th place finish overall. His teammate and fellow sophomore Nate Price was a strong 36^th overall.

We’ve already discussed some team breakthroughs like South Fayette and Quaker Valley. Jake Smiley of QV was one of the big success stories individually, placing 32^nd overall, just 9 seconds out of the medals. Christian Babo was one of the big overachievers on my board as well from Harbor Creek. He ran that gutsy race with a fast early pace and finished with his second individual state medal, some 16 places ahead of where I projected. I also was really impressed with the past few weeks from Jerod Waller of Berwick in District 2. Waller finished 29^th in this race and 8^th at Districts, both crushing my predictions for him and rolling among the front runners on this loaded Berwick team that put 3 in the top 50 overall.