By Jarrett
Felix
Over
the holiday break, lots of PA athletes raced across the Tri-State Area looking
for one last fast time before 2016 was officially in the books. Here’s a recap
of some of the action you may have missed while you were taking down decorations
or figuring out where you would be watching the ball drop.
Marine Corps Holiday Classic
Up at
the Armory, a few PA distance runners hopped into some marquee events. In the
Invitational Mile, Seneca’s Phoenix Myers was the top PA finisher with a time
of 4:27.90. Phoenix, one of the extremely accomplished Myers twins, took the
race out hard with a 63 opening quarter and was in the lead through about 800
meters of his slower section. That’s not bad for a guy with relatively little
indoor experience. Meanwhile, Cheltenham’s Will Griffen was also near the top
of the field with a time of 4:28.32. Griffen did a nice job covering moves in
the middle stages of the race and hung on well to the finish. Phoenix was 5th
overall (2nd in his heat) and Will was 7th (4th
in his heat). Dalton Hengst won the race in 4:21.54.
Also
completing the invitational final was Thomas Matsumura of Southern Lehigh who
ran 4:31.91 for 13th in the two heats combined. Joseph Cardie of
Springfield Delco (4:37.31) and Jacob Pasake of Western Wayne (4:41.17) also
cracked the top 25 for PA.
In the
800, Penn Trafford’s Nick Wagner continued his fast start with a PA #1 1:56.91
to take 2nd in the invitational race. A year ago, PA’s Dennis
Manyeah won the race in 1:56.13 followed closely by Mike Kolor at 1:56.30.
Kolor would go on to finish 3rd at states in the event just behind
Matt Wisner while Manyeah only contested relays at the state final. Wagner has
already raced well on a variety of tracks and looks like someone who was
chomping at the bit to get started on his senior track season. He holds a 1:53
outdoor best and is one of the favorites in a wide open field for PA.
Also
competing in this race was Donovan Myers of Seneca and Chase Semanyk of DT
West. The finished at the back of the field, but picked up some very valuable
racing experience. Donovan has never truly attacked an indoor season but was 2nd
in A for XC and has 1:53 kind of talent. To see him racing on this big of a
stage, this early is a great sign. As for Chase, he’s still learning a lot as a
junior who broke out late last spring. Based on his fast start in the 400 at
Lehigh, the talent is there for him to make a nice run at some point this
season.
In the
varsity section of the 800, a few more PA runners tried their hand at the 4 lap
race. Andrew Crosby of Cheltenham was PA’s top dog, running 2:03.00. I’m not
positive on the order of events, but I believe this was off the double from a
mile effort earlier in the day. Also doubling back was Thomas Matsumura
(2:04.29) and Jacob Pasake (2:06.31). Penn Wood had a couple top finishers,
neither of which were star Dennis Mayeah. Inerji Sirleaf ran 2:05.36 and Todd
Jackson ran 2:06.14.
In the
relays, the boys from Abington look like their old selves. They dropped an
8:07.79 for an easy runaway victory in the 4x8. It was a balanced effort with
splits of 2:00, 2:04, 2:02 and 2:01. Despite the loss of a couple key seniors
in Jake Good and Keion Broadus, it looks like Abington will continue to hang
around in the mid distances. They also dropped a 3:25 in the 4x4 with a sub 50
second 2nd leg.
In the
DMR, Holy Ghost Prep dropped their first big result of the year with a
10:47.28. The talented Prep squad has been a bubble team since the new system
was implemented for indoor state qualifying the past few years, but this fast
time in December suggests they will be working hard to leave no doubt about
their state qualifying odds. HGP won the race by 8 seconds over Kingsway Regional,
thanks in part to a strong 4:34 anchor leg that helped the team run down the 6
second advantage held by Fordham Prep.
Ocean Breeze Holiday Festival
State
3k medalist Seth Slavin opened up his indoor campaign with a gusty 2 mile
battle against East Meadow’s Timothy Euler running 9:37.73 to finish as the
runner-up by just 0.09 seconds. Slavin’s time, according to typical PTFCA
conversions, will translate down to just barely sub 9 (although by the widely
accepted conversion factors we are talking 8:55ish)[1]. Regardless, that’s a
really nice start to Slavin’s season and hopefully an indicator of big things
to come.
Bensalem
pulled out a nice win in their section of the 4x400, running 3:33.09 and also
grabbed a victory in their section of the 4x8, running 8:30.22. Bensalem was
the 2013 indoor and outdoor champions in the 4x800.
TFCAofGP Meet #3
Did
they run these two divisions in one meet again? The way they list the heats
makes me think they may have but I wasn’t there and can’t speak to it.
Division I
In the
800 meters, Evan Kutney of CR South dropped a very strong 2:01.26 to surprise
for the win in a loaded field. Kutney, a key member of South’s very strong DMR
last year, will look to join runners like Dan Dreeman and Jeff Wiseman as
recent state medalists from CR South in the 800. William Tennent got their
second top tier 800 performance as Matt Kraus (sub 2 last indoors) ran 2:03.25
to join Christian Craig among the state leaders. Miles Green of SJP and Syed
Shah of Upper Darby rounded out the top 4 finishers with marks of 2:04.50 and
2:05.09. Worth noting, Penn Wood’s Dennis Manyeah ran out of Heat 1 of 3 in
this one and dropped a 2:08.98 to win by almost 7 seconds over the rest of his
competition.
Neshaminy’s
Rusty Kujdych continues a hot start at the under distances with a 4:30.44 to
run away from a talented mile field. In total 5 runners met the Meet of Champs
qualifying standard of 4:40.24, but Kujdych won by nearly 7 seconds. Souderton’s
Joe Breen, who quietly had a phenomenal XC season behind teammate Connor
McMenamin, was second in a very nice time of 4:37.48. He was followed by CB
East’s Will Schulz and then top 10 state finisher Ryan Campbell of CR North.
Sean Rahill,
the top 50 state finisher from William Tennent, ran a very strong 3k season
debut. He dropped a 9:19 to defeated Ethan Koza of XC champions CRN (9:25).
In the
relays, Boyertown ran 11:15 to cruise to victory in the DMR. They won the race
by over 30 seconds to second place Father Judge (who had a couple XC state
qualifiers in the fall) and 3rd place CR South. Boyertown’s run came
without Dominic Derafelo who had run 4:40 in the mile.
As for
the 4x8, CB East dropped a very fast 8:19.98 to grab an easy victory of their
own. East, without Will Schulz, hit the SQG fairly comfortably with splits of
2:02-2:03-2:08-2:04 for Marc Motter, David Endres, John Brophy and Ata Shahideh
respectively. Keep in mind that only Shahideh is listed as a senior. CB East
was a top tier team a year ago, qualifying for the outdoor state finals and nearly
medaling last indoors without Jake Brophy. Now they are gathering a strong contingent
of mid-distance talent again. Methacton was second in this race, running 8:30
while Upper Dublin (8:34) was 3rd. I like this Methacton team as a
potential sleeper. Definitely a team that could make things interesting near
the back of the state qualifying window.
Homer
alert: In the 400, Upper Dublin pulled out another big win after George Weems
got the W at Burdette as Michael Henning just barely edged out 200 specialist
Terrance Laird of Coatesville 51.72 to 51.73. Pennridge’s John Nash was 3rd
in 52.29.
Division II
Lower
Merion was one of the surprise teams this past XC season, finishing as a top 10
team in the state. Now, as the track season heats up, they continue to churn
out impressive results. On the 30th, Junior Jake McFadden pulled out
a tight win in the 800, defeated Paul Robeson’s talented mid-distance runner
Jude Marcelin 2:07.08 to 2:07.59. In the mile, sophomore Diarmid Rae finished
second with a time of 4:48.98 behind winner Westley Wedell of Academy New
Church (4:42.01). Neither of those runners were consistent scorers during XC,
but both stepped up with their first major appearance on the track.
To cap
off the big day individually, Theodore Neckowicz ran 9:31 to finish first in
the DII 3k, defeating Ryan O’Donnell of the Westtown School (and the LM 4x2 was
champions in 1:35.97).
Twin
Valley got a narrow win over Wissahickon in the DMR (just 0.05 separated the
two squads) while Radnor was the top 4x800 school with an 8:47.
[1] Alright, I’m putting this in a foot
note so y’all can ignore my rant, but I just need to put this out there. The
conversion from 2 mile to 3k makes absolutely no sense! If a mile is about 1609
meters than a 2 mile is about 3218 meters. 9:37.74 for 3218 meters would come
out to about 0.18 seconds/meter. Translate that to 3000 meters and you get 8:58.6.
So that means there is some subsection of this 2 mile (which is longer than 3k
by the way) that was at least 8:58.6. That’s just how math works. But the PTFCA
will only convert it to like 8:59.7 (assuming I’m doing my math right, they
list 35 seconds for 3200 to 3k and 3 more seconds for 2 mile to 3200). Can
someone explain how this makes any sense?
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