More Analysis

So I suppose now I am an official renegade or something because my account has been eliminated from penntrack, so please if you are planning on messaging myself, don't because I will not see it or be able to respond. But yeah, I guess considering I didn't even make a post in the past 3 months or so and my account still got deleted I must be undesirable #1 in penntrackville. And that's pretty cool to me. I'm like a regular old Harry Potter.

But this isn't about me folks, this is about the weekend that was in PA track and field. Obviously Kevin Dare was awesome, but there was much, much more to talk about, including Ned Willig and his 1:51.25 state record performance that is (depending on where you look) #8 or #10 all time. Dyestat gave it 8th, penntrack gave it 10th.

So naturally I will call it 8th.

Now we look at what Ned did in a race where he blew away the competition and a lot of things jump to mind. First of all, I still am not convinced that Ned's best event is the 800 (I used to be convinced it was the 2 mile but obviously that was wrong), I think he is a miler, which means he has a shot at the state record if it's a fast pace at Millrose. I think the record is somewhere in the low 4:11 range off the top of my head I can't remember.

And there are plenty of other speculations that come with this performance. Does Ned skip the mile at states and a dual with Magaha in favor of running the 800 fresh at states and pursuing not just a PR and new state record, but a top 5 all time mark for indoor high school half milers?

He can also try both races, I think he could definitely win both (a feat which has not been done for a while at the indoor state championships), but a tiring dual with Magaha (or Dustin Wilson even if Magaha is still sick and what not, because honestly sometimes I just don't know what the kid is going to do) and then a doubling effort that may require him to take the pace for all 800m to avoid things getting tactical will certainly hurt his chances of playing hero for a team with high hopes in the DMR (we will get to that soon).

Lastly, does Willig have a shot at the national record? There is only one national meet and if Willig chooses to give fresh legs to the meet, he would almost certainly have a shot at becoming only the second high schooler under 1:50 in indoor track history. If Strymar Livingston throws his hat in the ring fresh of his unbelievable 500m USR (61 seconds, it's just as fast as any collegiate has run this year so far) and Zavon Watkins the defending champ who boasts a PR of 1:47.99 on a relay split from Outdoor Nats as a sophomore and recent winner of the New Balance games mile Ned will have ideal competition to shoot for a top time. It could be a scary fast race if everything plays out according to plan.

But enough about Ned Willig's 800, let's talk about Ned Willig's DMR. PA #1 10:27 with ideal competition but still a very fast time for this weekend. There is no doubt with 4 fresh legs this relay could not lose to anyone else in the state. I just don't see the talent to beat these guys and I feel Ned can chase down just about any relay. When it comes to the DMR I am in love with teams with fast anchors. Maybe its because guys like Ferry, Crits, Kaulbach, Palmisano, Lee, Kellar, and Endress have serious hardware for anchoring their teams over the years.

10:27 is pretty quick and Ned I'd imagine split fairly fast (making the 1:51.25 the next day more impressive) and right now it's 6 seconds faster than any other relay in the state. If LaSalle goes all in for the DMR instead of the 4x8 and open events I can see them having a shot at GV. Strath Haven looks good, but again they have to go all in for this race. Great Valley, however, also has to keep at least a relatively fresh squad. A tripling Ned Willig complicates things.

I picked Great Valley last year, it didn't work out. This year I am strong on the bandwagon once again. We shall see what happens.

BUT there was more action than just the stuff over at Yale.

For starters how about Pennwood with a sick 1:29 4x2. Haneef Hardy and Swenson have some quick sprint relays as well.

This was from a couple weekends back at PCLs but I just recently saw results, pretty sick work by O'Hara and LaSalle. Stone running really fast in the 1:57s flat rack. O'Hara stacking the mile and running train on everyone in that race. Then O'Hara ran two 4x8s that qualfied for states! 8:12 and 8:15! Wow that's pretty sick depth for O'Hara. I wonder if they spread the talent evenly or if they stacked one and not the other and the other just was clutch and ran out of their minds. It's more likely the first one I suppose, which means there is a lot of potential for O'Hara in both the 4x8 and the DMR.

Dan Jaskowak opened up with a 4:28 mile, I haven't seen results from this meet yet, but that's a pretty nice opening time for a guy who never had really fast track times (or XC times quite frankly til this year).

Vinny Todaro had a solid weekend for himself as well, qualifying for states on 1600m conversion from 4:30 and running a decent 2 mile on the double against Brendan Shearn who ran a pretty sweet 9:47 flat track 3200m. Converting to around 9:09ish for 3k in a solo effort to open his season. I'd like to see the guy step on the track at Lehigh at the Carnival and push with a top field to see if he can hit the states standard. It's definitely the toughest standard to hit of the standards.

Lastly Wissahickon ran a nice 4x4 this weekend at the Armory not to be overlooked as a team that can compete for the title this winter. And of course CR North doesn't fail to get their name back in the championship conversation with a 10:44 blow out win at Lavino, with potential to even run faster in the coming weeks. After seeing the splits you can see a few places where they have seconds to spare.

It will be an interesting next couple of weeks leading up to the state championships.