Back in Business

Sorry for the wait folks, I had some things going on this weekend that took up a lot of my time and there was no room for blogging. I did manage to catch a few things in the results feeds and I watched a few of the races at NCAAs. Congrats to Dan Lowry, Mark Dennin, Brady Gehret and Sam Ellison who represented PA pretty darn well at the NCAA meet. Brady split in the 44s twice! I think he is going to representing PA at the Olympic Trials which is pretty exciting. So when all was said and done here were some of the top PA performances according to TFRRS:
Sam Ellison 1:47.76
Owen Dawson 1:48.97, 3:42.54
Brian Fulton 1:49.49
Luke Lefebure 1:49.92
Alex Zubey 1:50.23, 3:46.01
Ben Scheetz 1:50.24
Trevor VanAckeren 1:50.46, Somewhere under 3:40
Sam Negley 1:50.83
Nick Crits 3:43.99
Matt Gillette 3:46.66
Jim Spisak 3:48.01, 13:50
Dan Lowry 13:34, 29:35
Mark Dennin 13:58, 29:31
Josh Izewski 14:02, 29:51
Kyle Dawson 14:04, 28:55
Vince McNally 14:06
Alfredo Santana 29:52
Chris Cirpo 29:53

Unfortunately after this weekend's action, I do have to make a few tweaks to the dream races that I have been constructing. Sorry to put yet another small delay on that but if I get bored, things will start being up tonight.

Speaking of said Henderson results, I'd like to take a moment to talk about some of them. Obviously fantastic work by Austin Pondel, a returning XC state medalist, to run a quick 15:32 uncontested at the Henderson distance festival. I believe he, like D10 rival Dan Jaskowak, is one of the guys moving into that middle classification this season. He could be dangerous in that top group chasing Shearn, Jaskowak and maybe Jones, Smathers, Williams, etc. I'd have to look a little more closely at who moves where. But keep Pondel in mind. His strength is clearly in the longer distances over the 3200m and shorter that are contested on the track. Certainly an XC sleeper this upcoming season.

The mile kind of turned out to be a little underwhelming at best, the field didn't develop with the same depth as the 800m and not too many guys ended up making this into a real fast field. Solid run by Yannacane but you figured he had an effort like that in him after the year he had at 800m. Probably wishes he ran that again, but I think he made the right choice to try and see what he could do in the mile. Aziz kind leveling off in the mile around the 4:18-4:20 mark. Would like to see some longer stuff from him, Wistar and Ritz in the 3200m. Nice race for Billotta as well. Looked like he had a good 800m split at states and caps off his season with a solid mile PR. He was a big contributor to O'Hara's success this year and it was nice to see him cap off his career there in a positive way.

The 800m was of course the main event of the day at Henderson for High School fans and a fantastic kick by Joey Logue made him the story. He is just a sophomore who dropped his open PR by about 3 seconds. It was a fantastic race where he and Coyle and Stone all split roughly even splits through the 400m. Logue had something around this in him after his anchor leg at states, but this was even faster than I could have possibly hoped. If he can hold this kind of effort he could be a 46/1:49 guy next year which would be scary. Mallon only ran 1:52 the year before he split sub 1:50 to anchor CB South to the state record as a Junior

Two other Juniors also ran PRs worth noting. And they both were wearing LaSalle jerseys. The boys Coyle and Stone rocked the race and Coyle was in position to win on the home stretch which makes his race perhaps more impressive than Logue's who was chasing (but also had to swing out wide). Coyle drops a massive PR, again something that we probably thought could happen, but not to this degree. I would have thought he could split in the 1:52s in the right race. 1:51 open is killer. Stone right behind in a slight PR for him. Those two legs by themselves would have put LaSalle roughly 16 seconds under two minute pace at states. Two 2 flat guys gives you 7:44. Their DMR for next year should be very fun to watch.

A couple other shout outs to Haneef Hardy and Ben Ritz. Ritz, coming off an absurdly huge PR in the 1600m added a big 800m PR and ran 1:54. Again, his 1600m time indicates that he had potential for this kind of time, but it is nice to see the guy go out and take what he deserves when some fail to do so. I think his best race may be the 3200m down the line, but we shall see. As for Hardy, he wasn't an 800 guy much this year, opting for team goals in the later part of the season and thus running the 400m to save his energy. Swenson put together quite the relay as a result. He was a true team player. But he had something to prove at this meet after being indoor state champion and he didn't want people to forget his name. He ran a killer 1:52 race and dropped his PR from indoors. He proved he can still mix it up with the top guys. Gotta give him props for that.