Friday – 4×100

A few weeks ago, we thought we’d let an all-senior squad take the track to let some guys experience Penn even though they may not be top four on the team. Unless you’re fast enough to make one of the finals or poised to run a fast ‘districts’ type time, this race can seem much ado about nothing. (5:30 wake-up, 6:30 bus, sit around for a few hours, warm up, into the paddock like livestock with 400-500 other schools, on the track for 60 sec, run for 11 sec. and out you go.) With Matt Selverian still having issues from an indoor injury and Darnell Watson with tender shins, an all senior contingent was out. Dunswell, Davies, Kane and Lloyd got the nod.  Pretty good stick work got the baton around in a season best 43.91 for 68th out of 310 teams in the small school division. Perspective is everything: the COA was won in 39.00 with 5 teams in the 40-41 sec. range.

Saturday – 4×400 American Conference

With Rahsheed Wright out, our dreams of sub 3:20 were dashed. Several teams (including us – Cam Christopher 1:54.70, 49.64) have capable anchormen. Quakertown with Hudson Delisle (1:53, 49.3), Upper Dublin has Mike Henning (49.55, 22.52) and Harry Truman has Sayyid Saunders (21.66). Question was, could our 51-52 types compete with their 51-52 types to give Cam a shot. We led off with aggressive Max Davies who always gives it his best. At indoor states, he was never headed from gun to hand-off and we got the same result here (PR 51.06) with William Tennent right on his shoulder at the exchange. It took Sam Kane only about 75 meters to shake the entire field, as a big gap opened up between Sam and the rest. His PR (50.68) had the other teams hoping for medals at this point as the plaque was pretty much out of the question.

Now for the drama: About 10 min before we were to enter the paddock, I noticed third leg Darnell Watson limping badly. Shins. Here we go AGAIN….down to our sixth man! Eric Papazian had only broken 53.0 once in his life and we needed at least a 52.0 to keep the squad in the hunt. Sam gave him a big lead and it looked like the field made up no ground on Eric as his 52.13 was all we needed. Now all Cam had to do was run his race. Mike Henning had Upper Dublin in second at this point but Mike would have to drop a 47 to get it done. No way. Cam’s 48.88 sealed the deal. 3:22.76 almost got us into the Philly area race. Were were third alternate.