State College Invite – What Went Down?

As the state qualifying landscape continues to heat up, we had a pretty epic night of races at State College on Thursday night. Things started with the boys from Wyomissing in the DMR. The AA state champs have had the pieces to put together a huge run in this event, but they’ve saved it until the last possible moment. With only one team within a minute, the W boys rolled to a 10:38.07 and essentially guaranteed a spot at states (they are #5 right now with conversions). This was a really exciting result as I’ve been hoping they would chase a DMR for a while. Will be interesting to see if Cullen opts for the mile or 800 now knowing he has a 1200 leg (or a 16?) still left to come at the end of the day. I was thinking 800 before, but now I’m kinda leaning mile for him.

This meet is typically Mid Penn/D3 teams, but we got a surprise as Bishop Shanahan brought some big guns to punch the last few state tickets they needed. Going into this weekend BS didn’t have a state qualified 4x4 and defending champ Josh Hoey wasn’t qualified in the 800. With neither of those qualified for Meet of Champs, I’d already started mapping out a schedule for the Shanahan boys thinking they wouldn’t have those events as options. Whoops.

Josh Hoey stormed across the PSU track in a new indoor personal best of 1:51.49. He won by 6 seconds in a time that as recently as 2011 would have been a state record (now there’s 4 sub 1:51 guys which is wild). This opens the door for a Mile-800 double out of Hoey if he wants to chase two events. Jaxson went for that same double his senior season (and then tripled in the 4x4) which I’m starting to think may be the route Josh takes looking ahead.

By the way, that Shanahan 4x4 punched their ticket to states at this meet as well. They dropped a 3:28 to make it in and, although they won’t be in the fast heat, this relay could still be dangerous with Zink and Hoey leading the charge.

The other big event from last night was the 3,000 meters. This event was already stacked on paper and things got even tougher last night. With still two marquee meets remaining, we have 15 guys under the SQG (14 of which I think would like to run this event at states). Mitchell Etter made it so that he won’t have to sweat the action on Saturday thanks to a nice PR of 8:48. He beat Brenden Miller of Upper Dauphin (doubling off a 4:34) for an impressive win against a strong field. Miller was well under the SQG as well, but he has a sub 8:50 mark already in the bank for a seed time. Chayce Macknair of Mifflin County showed once again that he’s a clutch performer. After starting the day outside the top 20, Macknair produced a 10+ second season best and soared up to 7^th in the state. His mark of 8:53.12 should lock up a state qualifying spot barring a truly historic weekend of indoor track.

With these new events taken into account, the current state cut off times look like this:

4x800 – 8:19.76

Mile – 4:32.45

800m – 2:00.89

3,000m – 8:56.47

DMR – 10:47.86

The biggest outstanding questions (beyond who is going to run fast this weekend) center around what Shanahan’s plan is for states (with all their relay and individual potential), what Pennsbury will do with their 800 guys (double in the open 8 and take up 3 spots? Scratchard in the mile? DMR?) And will any team actually scratch a relay if they aren’t going to go all in on it? Or will they run some inferior version of the squad that got them there?