RICHMOND, VA -- As competition begins Friday afternoon in the Central Region Indoor Track & Field Championships, most of the big guns in the region will be aiming for the 25 event finals scheduled for Saturday at the Arthur Ashe Center. And in a two-day competition that will feature some of the top-ranked prep track athletes in the country, no race has more firepower than the boys 1,600-meter run.
\"Everybody's in the mile,\" said Maggie Walker coach Jim Holdren. \"And they'll be running fresh.\"
Thomas Dale junior Alex Tatu, the Millrose Games prep mile runner-up and holder of the seventh-best time in the nation this season (4:17.04), is the defending champ and a clear favorite. But the field is deep; Mills Godwin's Matt Wolak, Maggie Walker's John Piersol and Jarrett Ridgeway, and Freeman's Graham Kearney all have run under 4:30 indoors this season. And Piersol and Wolak in particular are running very, very well.
Piersol raced to meet-record wins in the 1,600 and 3,200 last Saturday to lead Maggie Walker to the Colonial District team title. Though the performances – 4:27.15 and 9:37.93 -- hardly registered on the national leaderboard, where Piersol's season-best 9:14.02 in the 3,200 stands at No. 7, they were two of the best prep times ever recorded on the 145-meter Ashe Center track.
Only Jeff Slater of Monacan in 1984, and Tatu last year, at 4:22.1 and 4:25.90, respectively, have run faster in the 1,600. In the metric two mile, only J.R. Tucker's Des Proctor (9:31.1 in 1986), Slater (9:37.4 in 1984) and Clover Hill's Jeff Greene (9:37.5 in 1990) rank ahead of Piersol.
The Virginia-bound senior, winner of last year's region 3,200, will run both again Saturday, and there's no doubt which will be the tougher race.
\"I know what I'm doing in the [3,200],but I'm going to have to figure out a strategy for that mile,\" he said last weekend. Then he added, \"That's going to be good.\"
Wolak, headed to William and Mary next year and currently ranked in the top three in the Richmond area in all four distances from 500 to 3,200, will add to the confusion. In an impressive display of speed last Saturday, Wolak went back-to-back in the Colonial District 500 and 1,000, crushing a meet record in the former, with a 1:07.16, while winning both.
Wolak's time in the 500 ranks fourth on the Ashe Center performance list, and his 1,000 -- 2:36.60 – is No. 5. (Tatu's winning 2:36.17 in last year's region meet is No. 3.)
\"He's got the tools to do anything he sets his mind to,\" said Godwin distance coach Frank Wagner.
\"We've done two speed workouts all year,\" Wagner added. \"We're just trying to maintain his cross-country conditioning, and then try and peak for outdoors.\"
The strategy Saturday: \"A track like that, you have to stay close [to the lead] and hope for the best,\" Wagner said.
In the 1,000, Wolak and Tatu, ranked second in the country in the event, will tangle again, joined by Kearney and Ridgeway, currently U.S. No. 6.
TWO FOR ONE? Tatu will have to successfully defend his 1,600 and 1,000 titles and get a lot of help from Taylor McFadden, Jonathan Chapman and Dennis Boone in the jumps, hurdles and dashes for Thomas Dale to make a run at Atlee for the boys team title.
The Raiders, region champs two of the previous three years, have a deep group of sprinters and jumpers led by Nick Robinson, Anthony Easter and Jackie DeShazo. But if they falter in the early going, the Knights or Maggie Walker, with its strong corps of distance runners, may be able to slip in.
Though multi-event talents Briana Smith, the top seed in three events, and Kwadena Caple, the defending 55 and 300 champ, make Manchester the girls team to beat going in, Smith was not at top form in last week's Dominion District meet.
If Smith struggles again, look for Atlee -- which in Tiffany Cross (1,600 and 3,200), Anna Bushkar (500) and Kira Barcus (pole vault) has three athletes heavily favored to pick up wins in what figures to be a relatively low-scoring affair at the top – to possibly sweep the team titles. Armstrong, led by Shoshana and Malaika Pettes, Thomas Dale, Hermitage, Douglas Freeman and James River should be tightly bunched in the next tier.
RICHMOND, VA -- As competition begins Friday afternoon in the Central Region Indoor Track & Field Championships, most of the big guns in the region will be aiming for the 25 event finals scheduled for Saturday at the Arthur Ashe Center. And in a two-day competition that will feature some of the top-ranked prep track athletes in the country, no race has more firepower than the boys 1,600-meter run.
\"Everybody's in the mile,\" said Maggie Walker coach Jim Holdren. \"And they'll be running fresh.\"
Thomas Dale junior Alex Tatu, the Millrose Games prep mile runner-up and holder of the seventh-best time in the nation this season (4:17.04), is the defending champ and a clear favorite. But the field is deep; Mills Godwin's Matt Wolak, Maggie Walker's John Piersol and Jarrett Ridgeway, and Freeman's Graham Kearney all have run under 4:30 indoors this season. And Piersol and Wolak in particular are running very, very well.
Piersol raced to meet-record wins in the 1,600 and 3,200 last Saturday to lead Maggie Walker to the Colonial District team title. Though the performances – 4:27.15 and 9:37.93 -- hardly registered on the national leaderboard, where Piersol's season-best 9:14.02 in the 3,200 stands at No. 7, they were two of the best prep times ever recorded on the 145-meter Ashe Center track.