Now what else can I say about states? Well obviously Steiner had a great 3200m and proves that North Allegheny knows how to breed talent and prepare their top guys for the state meet. Justin Taylor, Matt Jacob, and Ryan Gil are all past runners who have been in medaling contention at the state meet in the 3200m and run great PR type races. Steiner continues the tradition. Bad luck for Kuchta, Baldwin has had their fair of struggles in the state meet in the past few years between Kuchta and Degregorio and their 4x8. But like any team with struggles (NA at the XC state meet for a few years had bad luck), I expect them to break out of it soon. The AAA District 1 Juniors had a rough state meet as well but those kids killed in the week before. Its hard to run 2 amazing 3200s back to back weeks. Ask even an experienced guy like Sam Hibbs. He couldn't quite match his effort from a week ago. But Harriman did step up at the state meet. He had a great kick and he ran within himself like Jaskowak and that worked out well.
In the mile I have to give major props again to Alex Moran. He really went for the win and made a big push and it helped these guys get down to these PR times. Like I have said, best race I have seen from Moran in my etrain career. Huemmler definitely has room to run faster, he had to lead the whole way and I don't care how good you are, if you lead the whole way unless you are the class of the field you are going to have a tough time not getting outkicked. Plus the heat means all these guys have room to drop. PS I don't mean to take anything away from Coyle, the kid ran amazing and had a killer kick, just throwing out some other ideas.
I'm really impressed with Kunzweiler's double as well in the 800m (and Nick Rotz in the 1600m too that was pretty sweet). Jeff Wiseman really desereved that nice 1:54 time. And of course he will have quite the duel with another great sophomore Joey Logue who split 1:52ish. Wiseman had been racing great all season and is nice to see the race pan out as it did. Then of course the stud freshman from Carlisle Zach Brehm is in the race as well.
But that's a long way off for sure.
One thing is for certain when you look at this state meet, the young guns were firing and they will be very fun to watch in 2013.
I think you should do a breakdown of each distance race for AAA and AA. Itd be cool to see your opinions on all of the races, and why everything went down the way it did.
ReplyDeleteIn case you couldn't tell I liked this idea haha, thank you for the input, it's comments like these that really make this blog better so appreciate it
DeleteI don't know if I would say that Hibbs didn't match his effort from districts. I think the state race was probably more impressive considering there was probably a 10-15 degree difference in the temperature and a much higher humidity level at states than at districts. Either way, I agree that first time competitors at the state meet in the 32 usually do not do as well as they did at districts.
ReplyDeleteeffort wise, i completely agree hibbs's state performance is much more impressive than his district effort, i meant more of the literal times in my original description of the race... macauley, quinn and emery had huge prs at districts and had a tough time matching that time at states, hibbs too had a hard time matching the time at states, but his race time was more impressive at states than districts in my opinion (and I believe yours as well)
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