Independent League Preview

This is my last "district" preview. Keep an eye out for recaps like the one one post down. And as mentioned before there are other district previews to check out below if you are interested.

Independent League Championships

With Jaxson Hoey out with an injury and Josh Hoey’s status in question, the previous top dogs in the state, Malvern Prep, will have their hands full with the boys from GFS. The GFS harriers showed some solid depth behind their fantastic top three at their league meet where they were fairly dominate. I’m still not sold on their 4-5, but this is a small enough meet that the battle will be based primarily in the front. Sellers and Schwartz filled that role last meet and will be key pieces if GFS is going to succeed in the post season at a meet like NXN.

 

Dahl, Newman and Hepp will have to beat out McDevitt, Hoey and Wills reasonable well for them to win this meet. However, if Josh Hoey can’t go, this becomes a very competitive matchup between Dahl, Newman and Hepp and McDevitt, Wills and Doane where Malvern Prep is likely the team with the weaker 4-5. I rode the GFS bandwagon hard earlier but have been forced to put the breaks on a bit in recent weeks. I still really like Dahl as a sleeper pick at season’s end to place very well at NXN (which is still over a month away) and Newman has been steadily improving, giving them a very potent top 3. McDevitt has been a beast this year for Malvern Prep and even without Jaxson, provides the team an impressive front runner. Wills and Doane have been stronger than they have gotten credit for this year. Both guys ran very solid at Paul Short and should contend for top 10 spots at the championships this year.

 

Ultimately, my prediction is simple. If Josh Hoey doesn’t run, this is GFS’s race to lose. If Josh is on the starting line and he’s healthy, it’s going to take a big day from GFS to turn the tables.

 

1       Malvern Prep    47

2       GFS             51

 

Individually, the absence of Jaxson Hoey opens the door for Sam Ritz to grab the individual title. He has been extremely strong this season. He ran a killer 4k at Manhattan where he beat out Andrew Marston and he handled a 15:40 guy in McDevitt at their league meet, winning by about 30 seconds. Overall, Ritz is looking like the guy who ran4:11 as a sophomore and has crazy potential. He can afford to focus all his efforts on peaking for Footlocker (or NXN I suppose, but he usually runs Footlocker), which gives him a leg up on his PIAA competitors. It’s moments like these where I wish they had a Meet of Champs …

 

But don’t assume that with Hoey out, Ritz will just walk away with the title. I think McDevitt can certainly bounce back in a week and make things closer. Dahl could take another big step forward and show he can race with the best. However, I think the most dangerous name may be Gabriel Allgayer from Mercersburg. He ran 15:50 at Paul Short in a winning effort in the White Race (not the Brown race that produced the absurdly fast times behind Abert’s 14:55 mark) and has had a variety of other strong, under the radar, quick races. I didn’t see him at either of the independent league meets this past week so hopefully there are no injury concerns here, but I think Allgayer could have a breakout race and keep things interesting in the race against Ritz.

 

Ben Szuhaj from Penn Charter, Josh Hoey from Malvern Prep, and Hepp and Newman from GFS all should be in the mix to crack the top 5. A deep sleeper is Alex Kim from the Haverford Schol who had a fantastic race at Paul Short in the White race and will look to have another strong performance at Independent States.

 

1       Ritz    GA

2       Allgayer        Mercersburg

3       McDevitt        Malvern Prep

4       Dahl    GFS

5       Szuhaj  Penn Charter

6       Jo. Hoey        Malvern Prep

7       Newman  GFS

8       Hepp    GFS

9       Wills   Malvern Prep

10      Doane   Malvern Prep

11      Kim     The Haverford School

12      Herman  Germantown Academy

13      Sperger Abington Friends

14      O'Donnell       Westtown School

15      Jarka Sellers   GFS

16      Freitag Penn Charter

17      Schwartz        GFS

18      Zwick   FCS

19      Mueller Malvern Prep

20      Jorgensen       Epsicopal