Mid Week Action

A couple of mid week performances were dropped worth talking about here.

First of all Ed Cheserek laid down a sick 1:51-4:07 double in front of a lot of PA's own top squads, it was pretty sick. Both his relays finished with gold medals.

CB East ran a nice relay in the DMR, under 11 minutes on a slight bank track. Pretty solid team that may be able to slip into states again in the DMR like they have the last couple years. Not sure they are a legitimate medal contender unless the field is less than 10 teams.

Holy Ghost Prep and CB West stumbled a little bit as I expected more out of both relays, but in HGP's case there is only so much you can do when it's Zach Israel vs. Ed Cheserek. Say they got the baton at the same time, Israel could have split 4:21 and still lost by the 14 seconds they lost by. That being said, I don't think Israel was quite that fast. Most likely HGP got out to a lead early, had a tough time running by themselves out front and Cheserek gobbled them up at the end with his big time split. Just speculation.

As for CB West, I was hoping for a closer performance to state time considering the guys they got and Metzler's potential, especially considering this team has had a relatively quiet last few weeks. I still see them as a squad who can get at least one relay to states by season's end, but it doesn't look like they will be making serious noise.

Nice race for GFS. They are always a potential DMR medalist, like the year they medaled when Kaulbach, McKenzie and Ortiz all didn't even run on the relay (AKA they medaled with their B squad). This year they are one good race away from hitting the qualifying standard again. Props to them.

Coyle and Stone had some nice 1500s (I read somewhere US #1 and #2? Great stat but technically speaking Cheserek ran as fast as those guys did over the course of a full mile) to take 1-2 in the race. This is a great sign for these two in the individual events. Coyle looked like he could produce races like this after his XC season, so I've been more impressed with Stone who is showing great range all the way up to the mile/15 considering at heart he's an 800 guy. If he went for the open 8 at states, a top 3 finish is possible and he could even mix it up for the win if a certain kid from Great Valley stays out of the picture.

I'd imagine these guys won't pass on the individual events because both are medal contenders in either race (8 or mile), but if they do they could put together a really great DMR. The 4x8 is a wide open race at states as well in my opinion (I don't know what Strath Haven's 4x8 plans are and Penncrest seems slightly vulnerable despite their great time), so LaSalle has a lot of choices to make. If they run fresh, the state meet record in the DMR could be on the line (ironically that record is held by LaSalle).

Real quick props to Bensalem for getting into states in the 4x8, maybe a deep sleeper for a medal in what I do anticipate will not be a deep field.

A few interesting races happened the next night at Glenn Mills.

First off, haven't heard many fast times recently from Futch and then he didn't run finals in the 55? Kind of worried about that, but it's early so we shall see. Those relays look much less dangerous with Futch on the squad, however.

Nice win for MacCauley in the 8, slow track, decent field. A win is a win. Admittedly Chris Ferry ran 1:55 here so I suppose it can't be that slow of a track. Interesting to see no Henderson guys up front in this meet. They have stacked the 8 the last couple times out. I guess their 4x8 took a lot of the legs out of them. Very solid 4x8 time with limited competition on that track. The North Penn Dynasty couldn't even break 8 minutes on that surface.

Solid win for Ferruzzi in the mile, nice time, nothing spectacular, but on another track he could probably have hit the SQS. Thought Brooks and Rivera would be faster but Rivera did just race the night before (as did Ferruzzi, but Bensalem ran a lot faster of relay) and Brooks seems more of mid distance 8-4 type these days.

2nd and 4th in the mile came from O'Hara but the real story was their 3200m squad running train on the field. Very fast times for that track including a big win by Savage and solid races by Pitone and Pastore. It will be interesting to see what their 4xmile does come nationals. Too bad there is no 4x2mile. I suppose that's XC anyway. Those kids still need to hit the SQS though so it will be interesting to see where they chose to go after it again.

Huemmler and Seelaus both ran well for an overdistance race and this has to be one of Huemmeler's first losses this track season. Still Savage and Pastore made a pretty big statement beating a couple of 4:20 guys who have been hot lately.

Tough day's for both Quinn and Hibbs. Hibbs will be fine, he has run some nice SQSs of late, but Quinn has the pressure of being state champ on his back and a big target there as well. We will see how he holds up, but at the very least he should get a 1200 leg on the DMR.