Day 2.5 Recap

District 11 Results came out past my bed time last night so they end up included here on the Day 2.5 Recap.

D11 A

Notre Dame ES moves down to A and steals the show! They were convincing champs over another newcomer in Morvian Acadmey. Morvian Academy had the individual champ in Sam Li. Marian Catholic ended up 4th were their super young squad, in experience played a bit of a role on the course, but they are a team to watch in the future. I’ll be interested to see what Adam Bahrey does next week at states. He’s my sleeper choice for top D11 guy there.

 

D11 AA

Allentown CC pulls out a big win over Jim Thorpe at the District championships! Gonoude also outlasts Condloy in a battle of a couple top notch AA talents. They were clearly a step above the rest of the field. Thorpe showed some real fire power thanks to Bucior taking third, but Saxon (the last member of their dominating front pack at leagues) fell back to 16th. Thorpe has a really strong top 4, but their 5 is a freshman who ended up a bit buried in this field. Ironically, Allentown CC was built similarly with their own killer top 4 and a 5 that was fairly far back (but their 5 and 6 were right next to each other).

 

The good news is, it feels like that’s how just about every single AA team is built this year! So states is going to be madness. How a team will score at the 5 spot is often crazy unpredictable already, so if the state meet is coming down to the 5 spot … hold on to your hats everybody.

 

D11 AAA

Easton ended any discussion of a possible upset when they took 1-2-7, all in front of Parkland’s 1. Grunwald, the team’s usual 4, struggled a bit but Koch stepped up very well and held down the fort. Overall, 5 in the top 18 in a good year for D11 is pretty solid. Easton has one of the best 1-2 punches in the state (NA, Conestoga and O’Hara all probably are saying no) and if they get Sherman to be a borderline top 50 guy at states, they can be a top 5 team at states. They are looking very similar to the 2008 Perk Valley team that got 4th at states. Now that depends on if Sherman can continue to progress like he did at districts and Koch and Grunwald continue to stay solid (there is a bit of a drop off to 6, but not as much as there has been in the past), but Easton is a scary team at the state meet.

 

As for Parkland, I still like this squad. Geiger has run impressively at some key invites this year like Centaur, PTXC and Carlisle. Kyvelos had a sneaky good race last year at the states course. Parkland has a decent amount of experience at Hershey after last year’s trip and they have a deep group of guys that goes back to 7. I’m not saying they are going to be at top 5 team, but they will compete hard with the mid pack squads and see what happens.

 

Individually, the top 10-12 guys in D11 are really good. I don’t think they’ve gotten quite enough credit for what they’ve been doing. The Parkland boys, Seth Slavin, Gabe Lamm and Alex Fitch are sleepers for a top 50 spot at states. Dan Quigley is one of my early medalist picks from Freedom. Aplaugh is a really solid running mate for Quigley. Lapsansky may end up in the top 10-15 guys this year.

 

And oh yeah, Abert may win the whole darn thing.

 

Stop me if this sounds familiar: is this the year for D11?!