North Penn overcomes early season doubts and lofty expectations to claim second consecutive Pennsylvania state title
Late last Friday afternoon, while teams continued to check in and preview the hilly Parkview Cross Country Course, site of the PIAA Championships, the varsity boys from North Penn sat comfortably on a patch of grass near the starting line.
The circle was loose, the mood light.
Resembling a group of college buddies hanging out playing poker on the deck of a vacation home, they exchanged barbs within their little group, which included their coaches, seemingly oblivious to what was going on around them.
This scene was a stark contrast for a team that, admittedly, was wound tighter than a guitar string throughout the early part of the season.
It was also the first indication that the rest of the state could be in trouble. Because when a team with the combination of talent and historical success that North Penn possess is relaxed, there is no telling what might happen. After all, this is the same school that has become the gold standard on the track when it comes to the 4x800 relay.
They’ve been in many a big race before. The runners know how to act and react. If you have witnessed them run, you know that on race day, ice water flows through their veins.
“That’s a whole mindset,” said North Penn coach Ron Jaros. “It’s the end of the season, you keep improving, you have your best race at the end.”
North Penn did.
Competing in the unfamiliar role as the underdog, the team ranked No. 13 in the latest MileSplit national poll, defended its PIAA title. With five runners within 49 seconds of each other, North Penn finished with 92 points, the second year it won with less than 100. Runner-up LaSalle finished with 125, clipping North Allegheny, which took third for the second straight season, by a point.
The pack mentality made the difference. Unlike a year ago when the Knights placed a pair of runners in the top 10, North Penn was dependant on keying off the performance of the team’s No.1 runner Brad Miles, and staying closely in tow.
“This is what we’ve been training for all year – the big meets,” said Miles, a senior, who was seventh overall. “Coming to the line we knew that we’re peaking. We know that we’re strong, and we know that we can just run our hardest out there and not give up. It really boosted our team moral today because we came in not ranked first today. We came in here to do what we do every week - run hard. It just worked out in our favor today, everybody ran well.”
Many on the state level had anointed North Allegheny as the pre-race favorite on the basis of North Allegheny’s convincing, 56-109, victory over the Knights five weeks earlier at the Carlisle Invitational, in addition to an impressive run by NA on very tough Western Pennsylvania course at its district meet the week prior.
Suffice to say, North Penn, which followed that dismal outing with victories in consecutive weeks at Salesianum (DE) and Manhattan College Invitational (NY), has undergone a complete metamorphosis since that late September afternoon, that by all accounts, was the low point of the season.
Sam Bernitt (16:36), Brian Quintrell (16:58) and Tim Stauring (17:10) rounded out the top five for North Penn, which finally exorcised those early season demons.
Running 3.1 miles is tough enough. To do so with a self-imposed anvil of expectations strapped to your back is down right impossible. Chasing the ghost of championships past and living up to the lofty reputation set forth by those who had come before them had obviously been weighing the current North Penn squad down.
“We were thinking a little too much in the beginning of the season about how they were going to do this year compared to last year,” Jaros said. “[Manhattan] showed that their fears about not being as good as last year … it put them at ease. They finally started to relax.”
Both Miles and Kuntzmann also agreed that the turning point might have been the Manhattan College Invitational, the proving ground of the East. Although it had more than enough firepower to compete, North Penn opted out of the Eastern States Championship. Instead, the Knights dominated the Varsity B Race, claiming the top four places, winning with just 19 points. More significant was their 13:04 team average, the second fastest of the day to US#11 Jamestown (VA).
“We decided that there was no reason to put them in a regional championship at that point,” Jaros said. “We had our three biggest races coming up. We go there as a fun race. It’s two and a half miles; you go out there and rip it. It’s a fun race, fun meet for us. Why put pressure on when that is going to be happening the next couple weeks?”
The decision not to run in the Eastern States Race at Manhattan seemed to be the panacea the Knights needed, especially when you consider that it was the third consecutive weekend North Penn had toed the line, and tough encounters at its own league, district and state meets loomed in the future.
North Penn won its league meet handily. The district championship was a bit tougher. But again, the Knights prevailed. Not surprisingly, though, the five team qualifiers from District 1, where North Penn competes, finished in the top seven at the state championship. Talk about brutal competition. One can only speculate how the sixth, seventh and eighth places finishers from that district would have fared at the PA State meet, had they been invited to compete.
North Penn wasn’t the only repeat team champion on the day. Central Cambria, withstood the graduation loss of a 2007 Individual State Champion and Foot Locker All-American, Carly Seymour, to capture the girls’ AA title in surprise fashion.
And in a surprise to no one, Emmaus, a team with NXN aspirations since day one, also defended its AAA girls’ crown. Lindsey Graybill was fourth overall for Emmaus.
“They’re a better team this year than they were last year,” said Emmaus coach Dan Wessner, whose team fell short of its goal of qualifying for Nike Team Nationals a year ago. “There was a little bit of disappointment after we were done with the season here in PA. It was the first time around. They’re better this year in many ways. They’re faster, they’re stronger and they’re mentally more ready to take on the teams from outside the state.”
What’s next for North Penn? Well, when the coaches and runners reconvened in their informal little group at their favorite post-championship race eatery, they were to discuss for the first time all season whether or not Nike Cross Nationals is in the cards.
PennTrackXC.com race photos by Don Rich and award ceremony photos by Megan Clugh
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