Super Thought: PreStates Madness

It was an astounding result in the Boys Gold race that capped off a fantastic day of running out at Hershey. The meet lived up to a lot of the hype and the winning times were absurdly fast.

Warning: the rest of this post will contain spoilers of the action from prestates. If you do not want to know the results, look no further.

Hockenbury and JDL (my new favorite nickname to use) winning was not anything ground breaking. Hockenbury's 16:10 win by roughly 30 seconds was spectacular, 10+ seconds faster than I anticipated and what I thought would be the performance of the day. York Suburban and Avon Grove's coming out parties were something noteworthy as well. I had plenty of material for a recap, and that was before the AAA boys dropped a bomb on Hershey.

15:50 for the winning runner. And it was quite the Powerful performance. I'm sorry I had to.

Paul Power took down the win over a star studded field in an unfathomable time for September 20th: 15:50. It smashed the meet record by 19 seconds. It also makes Power the 4th fastest man on this course ever behind only Russell (2x), Miles and Gunzenhauser. All guys who made it to national championship finals and 3 out of the 4 were regional champions.

I said before the race I said I felt the meet record would fall. I thought sub 16 was possible (but unlikely). I even thought Paul Power would have a nice breakthrough race this weekend and hoped he would have a moment after which people would be like, "hey that power kid is pretty good."

But I never imagined this. I'm still having hard time wrapping my head around the fact that Paul Power may be the favorite for state champ now. Abert is still ahead in my mind but he beat the two guys I thought had the best odds of winning states going into this weekend (James and Brophy). But I'm not going to take this moment to throw more pressure on Power. I'm going to praise him and let others praise him too. He deserves his moment of recognition.

Behind him the race was still amazingly fast. KJ gets redemption with a 15:54 (tied or 8th fastest time ever) and Jake Brophy ran a brilliant 16:01 (which would have won this meet any other year). Both those guys ran great for the second straight week and, although they are probably disappointed they didn't win, have to be pleased with where their training is.

Oh and in other news, O'Hara is for real. There was a stunning amount of doubt surrounding the O'Hara team this weekend (which I'm thinking had to be just trolling at this point) but they beat the penntrack ranked #1 in the state (and I ranked #2 behind Prep and just a smidge ahead of Conestoga) in North Allegheny. What's more impressive (to me at least) is they beat NA at it's own game. O'Hara was better through 3 guys than NA this weekend and held on through 5. Getting Drew Pastore back to form was big. That likely swung the race. And I think he will continue to improve going forward. If he can run with Morro and R James, this team is dangerous. Ryan James was huge with his 6th place finish. Just straight huge. He was right behind McGoey and Wharrey who were 4th and 5th (not a bad race by any stretch, they ran great today as well). Plus I'm not off the Pat James bandwagon at all. Sure he wasn't a top 5 guy today, but this was his first varsity performance and it came on the brutal hills of Hershey. Donovan and Nolan are no slouches, however, as 5-6 guys this go round.

NA was still solid for 3rd, 5 points back of OH and their 4-5 gained valuable experience today. They aren't finished in the title talks.

But you know who else has quietly creeped into the title talks? My Lebanon! That's right the Lebo boys were just 10 points back from O'Hara and 5 back from NA. That's awesome stuff from this packed up squad who rode a 55 second spread to 4th in the meet, one of the best spreads in the field. Ian Baun was the low stick they needed, stepping up for 9th overall. Then T Gunz, Harris, Brandenstein (a freshman) and Stone rounded out a terrific top 5. There is real potential for this squad, especially because WPIALs is no longer at Coopers Lake (a course that historically has given Lebo trouble and NA has excelled) and now is moved to a course where Lebo sweeps their early season invite fairly consistently (Cal I believe). I will say this, at states there is probably more than 6 places between Baun (16:38) and Brophy (16:01). In a front loaded race, the front runners will matter more. Baun is great, narrowing the gap between himself and the NA top two each week, but he will need to be in the medals at states for Lebo to have any shot at a title. And he may need to drag T Gunz or Harris with him. All the same, Ev Hatton is somewhere smiling about the performance of his old squadron.

Now no team beat the out of staters in Severna Park, but I think they weren't too worried about those guys this weekend, they were worrie about seeing how they stacked up against the rest of the state. But admittedly SP has now won two of our biggest invites, PTXC and PreStates. Impressive for them. Also convenient for me because I can compare across races use the SP guys as rough estimators. Abert beat SP's top guy by about 75 seconds at PTXC, Power did it by about 45 here today. Can't take that too seriously, but it's interesting to note.

Clearly the weather is great for fast times. Before today only one person had run 16:10 or faster on this course at this meet. Now there are 4 more who can say they have done it. This comes just a week after a record setting day at Briarwood. This has been great weather and great competition.

The titles are wide open for teams and individuals for AAA.

A couple other small takeaways from the meet.

#1 CB East with 5th today beating out strong squads like Lower Dauphin, State College and Twin Valley. Unfortunately, CB East still remains the biggest long shot of the bunch to make it to states in a brutal D1 field. Stoga, DTW, CB West (who just beat them in a dual meet), CR North and Pennsbury are all ranked ahead of them on my big board, and that's not even counting Henderson (ranked ahead of East on my board) and Bensalem (no longer ranked ahead, but still a dangerous squad). And don't even get me started on a team like Spring Ford (surprised for 9th today) who probably has no shot at making it to states but looks like they have the potential to be a great team. I haven't even mentioned the likes of Rustin and North Penn either.

Well at least we will see some of these great teams like CB East at the Meet of Champs. Wait what? There isn't a meet of champs? That was just a dream I had last night? President Obama didn't give me a Pulitzer Prize for my blog? Oh.

#2 Some other noteworthy performances came from Jon Perlman (7th overall in 16:30), Eric Diestelow (bounce back day in 14th), and Joe Piscano (15th from St Joes Prep). LD had a strong showing in 6th overall with Kyler Shea continuing to shine, finishing 24th as just a sophomore. Josh Smith continues to show signs of returning to full health (20th today), but no Kolor for Seneca which I'm hoping is not injury related. Nice race for Quiggle, especially given his training partners absence (18th).

#3 in the AA race, Lakeland was in there. Thought for sure they were A. Can anyone confirm? But in other AA team news, York Suburban is for real. Huge debut for Brady Wilt (2nd to Hockenbury) and teammate Donovan Mears responded for 4th. York Suburban looks like a serious title contender against Scranton Prep, who looked very strong last week. I'm also not ready to count out Grove City, who was second today despite neither Budnik or Benka cracking the top 5. This team will be there when it counts at year end. Pottsgrove is thinking the same way. They were a surprise 4th today. Throw in defending champs Tunkhannock and you got yourself an interesting game.

#4 how big is Avonworth? I thought they were AAA in track so how are they A in cross? Can anyone confirm ...

If Avonworth is a single A squad, then they may have grabbed the favorite position winning the White race over Elk Lake (my pre race pick). Elk Lake looked strong finishing 2nd with a nice pack, but will need a breakthrough medalist or two to get a state title. Bedell and Bell led the way at 17th and 18th today.

#5 Hockenbury stole the non Gold Race show with his ultimate "imagine if he had competition" type performance, but other guys showed some nice wheels out there. Beyond Wilt and Degroot-Lutzner, there was a big 2nd place in the White Race by Liam Raeshler (ran unattached at PTXC and showed nice improvement today) in 16:49, plus a solid sub 17 mark from Colten Trimble in 3rd. Andrew Koryak looked good in 4th for Vincentian Academy and Matt Murray carried some of his track momentum to the trails in 5th. Jonathan Condly had one of the biggest "who's that guy" moments of the year with his 3rd place run in the blue race for Jim Thorpe (16:47) he beat out Mears and Noah Smith from Ringold. Nate Morgan was 6th for Lakeland.

Well that's all I got on PreStates! Results are up on runhigh now! Check it out, it's great stuff.