The Regionals Are Coming: Footlocker

I’ve recently been using my computer mostly for 1999 Backyard Football so let’s see if these writing muscles still work …

Footlocker Qualifiers Fact Sheet

Some of PA’s best runners in the state will compete this weekend for a spot on the line in California for the prestigious Footlocker Championships. The top 10 runners in this weekend’s regional championship will qualify for the National finals. It’s as simple as that. Historically, PA has had 23 qualifiers over the past 11 seasons (about 2 per year). That doesn’t count PA residents who go to school out of state (i.e. Dalton Hengst, Phil Wood). So, if you are a numbers guy, you’d place your bets on 2 guys to make it out of this regional in NY.

Flipping back through the history, let’s take a look at our profile of Footlocker finalists. I’ve organized the names by the place at Footlocker Northeast Regionals.

1^st – Brad Miles (2009), Noah Affolder (2016)

2^nd – Mark Dennin (2007), Jake Brophy (2015), Sam Affolder (2016)**

4^th – Casey Comber (2014), Brendan Shearn (2012)

5^th – Chris Aldrich (2007), Jake Brophy (2014)*, Dustin Wilson (2011), Rad Gunzenhauser (2009)

7^th – Vince McNally (2007), Max Norris (2012)

8^th – Chris Campbell (2010), Ryan Gil (2009)*, Zach Skolnekovich (2016)

9^th – Paul Springer (2006), Zach Hebda (2010), Nathan Henderson (2016), Brent Kennedy (2012)*

10^th – Ross Wilson (2013), Austin Pondel (2012), Ben Furcht (2008)

Out of that group of 23, the majority were seniors. We’ve had just three junior qualifiers (denoted with a *) and one sophomore (denoted with a **).

Now let’s look at this by year.

2006 – 1 (10^th)

2007 – 3 (2^nd, 5^th, 7^th)

2008 – 1 (10^th)

2009 – 3 (1^st, 5^th, 8^th)

2010 – 2 (9^th, 10^th)

2011 – 1 (5^th)

2012 – 4 (4^th, 7^th, 9^th, 10^th)

2013 – 1 (10^th)

2014 – 2 (4^th, 5^th)

2015 – 1 (2^nd)

2016 – 4 (1^st, 2^nd, 8^th, 9^th)

If you are looking for some type of trend, we rarely follow up a big qualifier year with another big qualifier year. That means we could only end up with 1 guy this year. Personally, I’m leaning towards two getting in, but you never know. It’s a tough, ultra-competitive meet.

OK, now that’s look back and figure out how the Foolocker qualifiers finished at their respective state championships. First, let’s take a look at only the AAA qualifiers. AAA qualifiers make up the majority of the qualifiers as only Brendan Shearn, Dustin Wilson and Zach Skolnekovich punched a ticket from outside the large schools.

1^st @ States – 5

2^nd @ States – 5

3^rd @ States – 5

4^th @ States – 2

6^th @ States – 1

11^th @ States – 1

18^th @ States – 1

Note that our two AA national qualifiers were both 2^nd at states in what most would consider upsets. Dustin Wilson (from the Independent league) was a runaway champ in his league by perhaps the largest margin in meet history (I think he was also a back to back champion if memory serves).

Yes, there have been a few guys that look like long shots (18^th and 11^th at states), but note that those two guys (McNally and Furcht) were district champs and were my individual state champion picks prior to the state meet. Which brings me to the next point, where did I predict each of these guys to finish at states? Now for some of them, I won’t know exactly (I didn’t always have a blog), but I’ll estimate for the sake of the exercise.

1^st @ States – 7 {Miles, Affolder, Brophy (2015), McNally, Campbell, Springer, Furcht}

So basically the guy I picked to win states made Footlocker Nats 7 out of 11 years. The years I didn’t would have been 2011 (no AAA runners made it), 2012 (my predicted champ ran NXN, my runner-up was Brent Kennedy who made nationals), 2013 (I didn’t make official predictions during my gap year but my pick went to NXN, my runner-up probably would have been Ross Wilson who ended up making FL Nats), 2014 (I did a weird prediction thing that year, but my top guys who ended up going to FL were likely Abert, Brophy, Comber and Power).

When you think about, my top predicted runner out of those who competed at Footlocker usually ended up making Footlocker, even when they didn’t win the state championship. Now that isn’t meant to make me sound like a genius or justify all my whiffs at states, but is meant more to indicate that typically, the best guy in the state all year ends up in the National Championships more so than they end up the state champion.

It also means that guys who have redemption on their mind during their training block are more likely to post big results at regionals. That was the story behind Skolnekovich last fall. It was also the story in years past for guys like Ben Furcht and Neal Berman (11^th), the North Hills monster (Hebda, Silenieks in 11^th, Kush in 13^th) and more. Also worth mentioning, notice that these guys had training partners run with them through the end of the season. It’s a long grind to train the extra weeks and having a guy there by your side really helps.

I say that kind of stuff every year so if you’ve been reading me for a while you probably could have predicted yourself what half of these paragraphs would be saying. But now I’m going to take all that rambling and turn it into a prediction.

I’ve got Rusty Kujdych making it to Footlocker. He’s been our #1 guy all season and has tested himself in some big time meets. He doesn’t have experience at this particular meet which scares me a tiny bit, but the guy has undoubtedly been our biggest star in 2017. I’d be surprised if he isn’t in the top 10. To be fair, I don’t know anything about the big names outside of PA, but my hunch is a top 5 finish for Rusty. Maybe 3^rd because we haven’t had one of those in a while.

I also think Noah Beveridge is going to get in. Maybe I’m being stubborn since I picked him to win states, but I like the Butler senior’s ability to peak. He has a training partner in Brett Brady who looks like he is extending his season through to regionals. He has experience from racing here a year ago. I feel like he probably has a little redemption on his mind as well. Even though he ran well at states, he may have been hoping for a bit more as he was closer to 3^rd than 1^st. I could see Noah sneaking in around 10^th.

After that, I don’t see anybody cracking the top 10. However, there are some names that should be noted. #1 is Josh Hoey of Bishop Shanahan. It appears that he and his brother Jonah are signed up for this meet. If Josh ends up running, it is undoubtedly with the goal of qualifying for Footlockers. As we saw during XC last year, Josh is not afraid to go all in on track season at the expense of XC so the fact that he is skipping some of his track training blog to chase a nationals spot should indicate he is hungry and motivated. He likely was hoping to be competing for a state title as well last weekend and finished “just” 7^th in the field. I’ve got a feeling he will bounce back, potentially really picking off guys the second half of the race. I could see him in that 8-12 range. I don’t have him in, but it would be silly to count him out completely.

Morgan Cupp and Tyler Wirth will likely be competing for scoring spots on the PA team. Cupp has had a very consistent season. I’m not sure he can pop off the otherworldly performance it takes to break into that top 10, but he is the kind of guy that could definitely dip into the top 20 or better. Cupp has two top 50 state finishers in his lockerroom that are helping him train these few weeks as well. That makes him an x-factor. As for Wirth, he’s just a junior in his first XC season so he’s not your typical Footlocker qualifier, but he’s also a massive talent who placed 5^th in the state. So really the sky is the limit for this kid from Wallenpaupack. I’m very excited he is racing this meet if for no other reason than he will gain some valuable experience for a national qualifying attempt during his senior year.

Mitchell Etter of State College (state medalist and district champ), Czar Tarr, Christian Groff, Andrew Foster and Owen Isham are all compelling AAA entries.

From the smaller sections, we have the 3^rd and 4^th place finishers from A (Jack Miller and Andrew Healey) as well as AA bronze medalist Jonah Powell. All of these guys are underclassmen (Healey a sophomore), meaning they have a chance to make noise this year and next year if things break right. Their performances this weekend, while long shots for a big run to the top 10-12, could set the tone for a run at a state championship or national qualifying performance next year. Plus, this is a chance to prove to the large school elites that they belong in the conversation for tops in the state. Don’t sleep on South Fayette’s Sam Snodgrass either. If he shows up for this meet after his state meet where he slipped back a bit in the second half of the race, he has the “redemption” card to play. Much like Zach Skolnekvoich, another AA WPIAL guy, Snodgrass could be just hungry enough to upset some people.

The independent league duo of Elias Lindgren and Peter Borger will also be in the mix. The independent league school, in my opinion, lends itself a bit better to a regionally timed peak as their state championship isn’t hyped in quite the same way as the PIAAs. And for the record, Borger and Lindgren are really good runners. We haven’t seen them much against the elite AAA talent, but we will get a real good look at them this weekend and I think people will be impressed. Remember, everyone is in the same field for indoor states and this race could set a tone for these independent leaguers at PSU next year.

A few more names I haven’t mentioned yet: Evan Kreider of Cocalico, Brett Pope of Bellefonte, Ben Reisenweaver of Schuylkill Valley, Andrew Stanley of Southern Huntington, Mark Brown of Greensburg Salem and Jacob Underwood of Wilson. Some youngsters will hit the cross including the ultra talented Penns Valley freshmen (alongside senior leader Chris Colwell), sophomore sensations like Ben Hoffman and Garrett Baublitz and other notable freshmen like Brayden Harris of Mifflin County and Van May of Bedford.

These entries are based on the Footlocker website that I skimmed earlier this morning. More names may pop up (post them in the comments), but also we may see some names that were entered who decide that it is best not to continue their season past Thanksgiving (feel free to comment about that too).

It’s also worth noting that there will be many top names (including a pair of state champions) that compete at the NXN Regional championship meet to try and qualify for that national championship. I’ll hit that one up with a preview later on this week. So stay tuned for the continued rust-busters from etrain11.