Alright guys, you know the drill.
1. O'Hara- Still looking very good, solid top 3 and depth beyond the 5th man is a big boost. Belfatto and Hayes are both looking strong right now. Kevin James is running much better than most would have anticipated at the beginning of the year. He, Pitone and Savage are all top 15 kinda guys in AAA states right now.
2. Henderson- Readers of my blog rejoice, Henderson looked very good this weekend, and anyone who wants to crown O'Hara as champs right now should proceed with caution. Henderson showed off solid depth and Barchet is rounding in to top form. Right now they are definitely not better than O'Hara but they are showing signs that they are heading towards the top.
3. Allegheny- Rough time to have an off weekend. Henderson and O'Hara looked so good it was hard for these boys to keep pace. They are a young team so hopefully they stay strong and the young guys come on late.
4. Pennsbury- They had an off weekend of their own to recover after the grueling state meet course. I haven't seen anything from the other schools to surpass this group. Harriman and Webb are very strong, the pack is still solid.
5. West Chester East- I like what this squad has done. They have responded well to a bunch of criticism (on this blog at least) and pulled out a big win at Paul Short. They have a very strong pack and it is something that no one outside of the top 3 teams can boast about. If Cummings and Diestelow are top 15 guys at Districts, they can beat Pennsbury I'd have to imagine.
6. Cumberland Valley- If Coburn was running at his best at Paul Short, the results would have looked much different. However, things happen, its part of the sport and it will happen to a bunch of guys come states. What's nice about CV is they still managed to place well and beat out Hershey with some of their lesser known guys stepping up.
7. Mt. Lebanon- Very solid team this year, not the big flashy invite wins or the big names, but a lot of talented guys who are working hard and following the example Rad and Alex left for them before they graduated. The WPIAL is always legit, can't count out a team like this.
8. Lower Dauphin- Who would have thought a bit of not racing would lower these guys so much? A tough dual meet loss to Hershey knocks them a bit here, but of course we know this is still a very solid team that will be competing for the D3 title. The pack has come together nicely behind their Junior leaders.
9. Hershey- Really running well as a team with another very solid pack. Hopefully there top 2 can move a little bit farther up into the lead packs to give these guys some front runners to go with their pack. Good performance at Paul Short. I am sure they are confident they can run with CV when it counts.
10. CRN- The top 3for this team is finally rounding into shape. Emery is showing a lot of potential, he just needs to prove himself in big deep fields. Luckily, Ross Wilson has done just that in his two big invites this season. These two power houses and the recent rival of James Zingarini should help this historic program scoot back into the state meet.
Henderson's Haugh ran the JV race Saturday so he's probably coming back from injury. 3+ weeks to districts, 4 to states is enough time to get into shape enough to matter.
ReplyDeleteWhat about Chaborek? Is he injured?
with all the summer running the Henderson crew does, is it worth it?
Seniors can't run the JV race at Carlisle I believe
DeleteThat changed this year, the JV race got spilt into a JR/SR race and a FR/SO race.
DeleteI have a quick question...where do you rank Downingtown West? I hear that they are putting together a decent team this year? And what about Great Valley? I haven't heard a whole lot about them so far...
ReplyDeleteBoth teams won't do anything beyond Chesmonts, sorry but no depth in either team or front runners
DeleteSteadman's 16:11 on a very difficult course isn't enough for you?
DeleteHe's a solid runner, but I wouldn't consider him front runner.
DeleteThat VA invitational course is not very difficult, the course rating is not accurate.
DeleteDowningtown West will go to States if they develop a 5th man. They have Leidal and Steadman (both currently around 16:15). There are around 5 guys in the 17:30's and 3 in the 17:40's (all of these on difficult courses). If one of those 8 guys can pop a good time, which is likely, Dwest will go to states.
DeleteIs Leidal hurt? I would have expected him to run even to Steadman, not 20-30 seconds behind.
DeleteOnly the top five in all of district 1 go to states. Right now Dtw is tied for 5th with Rustin in their conference. They may not even be top five at chesmonts.
DeleteNews Flash - Austin Pondel (Corry D10) to run in AAA this postseason. Just heard it was approved at the District 10 committee meeting today.
ReplyDeleteWhere is DTW? I thought they were top in the state? They make CBA look bad. Jeez Etrain, what're you doing?
ReplyDelete#DTW#StateTitle#1-5@States#RegionalChamps#NationalChamps
Dwest are starting to build up for a peak at Chesmonts/Districts/States/Nationals.
DeleteKevin Moy's been prepping to peak for all those races too!
Deletefunniest thing ive read on here in awhile
ReplyDeleteDwest sounds legit
ReplyDeleteDwest crushed Coatesville yesterday. Rustin beat Kennett. Dwest moves ahead of Kennett and finishes tied with Rustin for 5th in Chesmonts behind WCH, WCE, GV and Unionville.
ReplyDeleteYou've really got to take into account the fact that there are 2 divisions in the Chesmonts. Dwest is probably 3rd in ability level, as they've only run against WCH and WCE, not GV and Unionville.
DeleteRegarding the above, I'm not even from DTW, I just think that they're being underestimated.
DeleteI think ChesMonts is gonna be:
ReplyDelete1 Henderson (obviously)
2 WC East
3 Great Valley
4 D West (by less than 5 points)
It's gonna be close. The same goes for the D1 championship
Just an interesting thing to note about team scores
ReplyDeleteIf you take the CRN from their home this past weekend invite (a more difficult course than Paul Short) and add them into the Paul Short Brown race you get Emery 2nd, Wilson 6th, Zingarini- 16th, Arita- 52nd, Griswold- 53rd (129 points overall) To WCE's 152 points (didn't feel like moving the people around to get exact scores, but CRN wins by over 20 either way). Yet they're ranked 5 spots behind on your list.
--ForrestCRN
Hey ForrestCRN are you by any chance biased towards CRN?
DeleteEveryone who posts here is bias, but yes, I am. I mean I know that CRN is the 4th best team in the state right now, and they have a bunch of work to do in order to catch the top 3 teams (O'Hara, NA, and WCH). Not sure who posted after me, but I've ran Lehigh 7 times and my home course (CRN) 14 or so, and did workouts on it all the time, and they may be similar, but woodchip hill its brutal and way worse than any hill at Lehigh, and i'd rather run at a flat course like Lehigh anyday, and it awards faster times by 10 to 15 seconds. But I didn't factor these things into the results, and I posted facts. So yes, I like promoting my high school team because they're a great group of guys and a very talented squad, but I know where they stand individually and as a team.
DeleteAnd as I called right after Viking, pennsbury would peak early, and look what happened at Homdel. If they make it out of the district in 5th that'd be a success for them. THey're such a low milage team it's tough for guys who aren't strong like Harriman.
--ForrestCRN
P.S. everyone promotes their own guys, just posts anonymously. Henderson guys promote themselves, RJT will promote and discuss his team (GV), ect. ect. I just show my affiliation, and I will post facts even if I add a bias when posting them. So take what I say as you will, atleast you know who is posting unlike the majority of bloggers
DWest doesn't promote themselves. They let the results do the talking.
DeleteHonestly DWest is so overrated And so is CRN
DeleteWhat is a low mileage team in terms of weekly mileage and, does that include warm up time which can be up to 10 miles a week combined. What would be the higher end for weekly mileage too?
DeleteDepends on the team and the level of training. If we're talking about high school i'd say low milage is 20 to 30 miles a week is low for a mid-distance runner. During XC 30 to 40 is low milage. (PB does about 35 from what i've heard). Average/Mid milage for XC would be like 40 to 60. High milage would be 60 to 80. Extreme milage would be aroud 80 to 100. I heard Quinn Devlin was doing over 100 when he got a stress fracture. When you go up levels doing higher milage makes more sense. For example Cam Levins does 140 miles per week during track season for 5k and 10k training, and David Rudishia did about 90 miles a week when training for the olympics and he's an 800 guy.
DeleteFor high school I would say it's best for runners to stay in the 40 to 60 range, but I do know that many teams succeed this, especially coming from a high milage team. I'd guess Henderon, O'Hara, and others are in the 60's range for most of the season, but I could be wrong, i've never seen or heard about their training logs. just an assumption.
--ForrestCRN
Thanks ForrestCRN, that is helpful. Do you include warm up mileage in the totals?
DeleteI think anything over 65 is too much for the high school runner, most are still growing, the risk isn't worth it. I heard W-chester east has two down with stress fractures.
One rumor had Henderson up to 90 miles per week max. (not average)
DeleteWhy would they do that? I've never heard that any team has done 90 before and no team would ever do that many miles per week ever. Like you said, it's a rumor, so stop spreading more. anddd, I do believe both teams are over 65. 65 is too much for an average runner, but none of these runners are average on either team.
DeleteWarm-up would count into this equation. Big teams like this probably do a 2 mile warm-up or so before workouts and a 2 to 4 mile cool down afterwards. So workout days end up being over 10 miles most times.
DeleteAlso, big schools can do higher milage because they have a larger pool of students, many kids get injured a lot in these programs, but the kids who do well end up running great times. I would argue that some runners on these teams are average, but they thrive in high milage training and therefore become very successful runners. Great coaches can take average runners and make them great.
--ForrestCRN
The CRN course is not tougher then Lehigh and WCE beat CRN already this year and has only lost to Henderson. We'll see what CRN has at Districts. East lost to WCH 21-35. If you dual meet score Briarwood-CRN lost to Henderson-24-33 with Rimkis getting DQd. Should be pretty close at Districts.
ReplyDeleteHenderson will win districts comfortably.
DeleteHenderson beat D-east 18 to 43 without Aj or bobby. East is a great deal behind CRN.
DeleteDowningtown East is a great deal behind, but we're talking about West Chester East. They are much much better than Downingtown
DeleteDWWest is apparently the team to beat.
DeleteDWest is not good people, give it up. They have no talent. You wanna talk serious, talk about Henderson or O'hara. Everyone else isn't gonna do crap this year
DeleteApparently Henderson came second against CBA at Manhattan today
ReplyDelete