Weekend Action

First off, the final poll to decide the bracket champion is up now and closes on the 4th so if you want to pick a winner get your votes in soon.

Now on to this weekend's action.

Let's start in Downingtown on Friday night where there were some impressive early season performances. Now I hate to lead with this comment because a lot of guys ran great but my real question here is now Devlin just yet? A lot of talk about this guy being the winner of the outdoor gold in the 32, but meanwhile three guys are already under 9:30 and another 5+ are knocking on the door. I don't feel like Burkhardt and Fischer were still completely off the radar at this point last year but I don't really remember for sure to be fair.

Now that being said, if Devlin is in decent shape I honestly don't expect it to be a fast year in the 3200m for AAA. The guy who was a pretty big favorite lost this weekend and a kid from West Chester that has been off everybody's radar is amongst the new favorites as a result. Of course my favorite isn't even on that side of the state (which could be a problem because D1 has straight dominated the 3200 for a while now) but we will touch on all this later.

But I digress, back to Downingtown. One of my personal biggest surprises of the weekend came from Unionville's Steve Yannocane who had a solid, but fairly expected, indoor campaign but dropped a 1:56.15 PR on the field to open up his spring track season. He remembers just missing the finals at states outdoors last year I'm sure and Unionville tends to churn out some pretty good runners. Kid's a junior as well.

Nice PRs for AJ and Liedel. Both should be under 4:20 sometime soon (Henderson Distance Festival perhaps?) and AJ looks really good fitting into the mile role. Might be a surprise outdoor state medalist if he keeps this up in a very solid mile field for AAA boys. DT West continues to show great 4x8 potential with Liedal and Jenkins running nice opening marks. Also nice to see Barchet back in the picture for Henderson. Scary XC squad in 2011.

As we move west, I'll take a brief pit stop at the Altoona Invite. Don't have much to say here. Nice 4x8 for Kiski but not incredibly unsurprising unless Kennedy is in teh 1:56s already. Nice races by Mountain. Big 1600m PR and then a solid 800 upset win. Replogle ran solid too, but Mountain was the surprise and shows signs that a breakout 32 may be in his future.

8:01 4x8 from Chambersburg, solid runs for Holder in the 4 and Rotz but nothing really crazy there. Thought we would see a bit more out of Moon after his big state meet, but still early in the season of course.

Out west at South Hills, the big names out west were throwing down. At 800m it was the stunner and new PA leader Vincent Tonzo laying down a filthy 1:54 opener. 1:54.26 for this early in the year is a great sign for the North Allegheny harrier who not only clocked over a second PR, but also beat indoor state medalist Will Baily fairly handily (over 3 seconds). But I'm assuming Baily was on the double from a solid 1600m effort which takes away slighly from the quality of the win but the time is very fast for this early.

In the 1600m, Ryan Smathers surprised with the 4:21 victory barely edging out Jaskowak. Steiner took 3rd with Baily 4th. Lawtin Tellin getting into the action with a 4:38. A little slow, but didn't see much of him indoors so may be recovering from some type of injury. He is a potential sleeper in the later part of the season if he drops time. Bojarski also has room to drop, he came up a little short of his PR this week. State medalist Ean Disilivio dropped a 4:52 as well in early season action.

I'm assuming the 32 came before the 16, but either way it is one heck of a double for state runner up Dan Jaskowak who was runner up in the 3200 as well as the 16 with his 9:33-4:22 low double. Really great strength for the man from Grove City and in my opinion, he is the favorite for the 32 outdoors at AAA states if he chooses to go for it fresh. He has really made an impression on me with his ability to show up big and run great races. He's made me into a believer.

But he didn't win the 32, that belonged to the man with the 2nd fastest PR in the state behind Dustin Wilson, Andrew Kuchta, who ran a very nice 9:32 to open his season. He will be amongst the favorites at WPIALs, but Baldwin has struggled to find gold at states. DeGregorio, Kuchta, Hobart, Logan, James, the 4x8, the DMR, Bishop, Wolfe, the 4x4 have all had near misses or below average performances at states in the past for Baldwin so hopefully their luck is about to change.

Moran with a 9:35 to open up, again running overdistance here in the early going. Respectable performance to mix it up with those guys and hang tough. I think in the mile he will be a factor. This isn't jaw dropping, but by no means is it a bad loss.

Lastly we go to the Track Classic. First off nice races by O'Such and Belfatto (the soph who should be a nice replacement for that XC squad next year that will once again be very good) but let's face it the story here is the 32.

Although the dream race didn't pan out as expected with the absence of two time indoor state champion Ned Willig, we still had all the rest of the big names including state runner up Sam Hibbs, state champion Conner Quinn, and state runner up O'Hara's top 5. But in the end it was two guys who got limited love and absolutely no love who made the race.

First off, gotta apologize to Zach Trama who didn't even get a mention in etrain's preview and made the race, taking over when the going got tough and barely getting outkicked for 1st and 2nd. Huge PR and goes from being a virtual nobody on the PA scene to a potential state medalist in the 3200 and maybe even a potential state champion.

But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves here.

Sam Hibbs still did take care of early season business by finding a gear to get Trama at the end and still is the favorite outdoors in the 32 (not my pick, but the favorite). 9:29 for the end of March is still sick and usually senior experience prevails in the big meets and Hibbs is one of the few top guys who can say that.

But tell that to Conner Quinn, who is coming off the state championship in XC as a Junior and dropped a 9:35 3 second PR in his first real race in a while. He should be dangerous as things progress. The XC state champion has found his way under 9:20 the following spring a startlingly high percentage of the time.

How about the O'Hara boys as well? They all work together so well. Savage was #1 once again and seems to be the consistent top guy of the group with an overall outdoor PR for him as well, dropping a 9:33 but behind him was a studly race from Pitone, a solid day by Pastore, a surprisingly fast time from the freshman James, and an off day for Billotta that still landed him under 9:43. They may have 5 guys qualify for states in the 3200m outdoors. It is a bit of a stretch but all five have the potential to run under 9:31 if they work together. They have a huge advantage in practice every day.

And lastly I should probably talk about the winner. I purposely put this in at the end because I know I will end up sounding pretty biased and I hope that some people haven't even read this far and won't judge me. Obviously I didn't expect this considering my most recent post about the meet before this, so I just have to say big congrats to Francis Ferruzzi on a huge win. 9:28.70, an 8 second PR, coming early season in March in less than ideal conditions. He closed in 65 seconds. I also know that Ferruzzi has missed a lot of time in practice lately as he has tried to fight off some injuries.

The guy is coming around and has a lot of potential. He is the only guy in AAA who has a win over Hibbs this spring, and Hibbs was one of the hottest runners in the state at the end of indoors. Ferruzzi also knows how to race, run even pace, and not loose his head. He could be dangerous at the state meet if his easy first mile turns from low 4:40s to mid to low 4:30s. Needs to do a little work on his mile PR, but could turn heads and surprise come outdoors with another top 5 finish or so.

A lot of depth in the 3200 this year, even if there are no superstars.