Some bad picks from Grotepoll.com...many wrong answers.  Who was the biggest B.A. of the meet?  It may surprise you to discover its from a different state...everybody knows South Jersey is actually the state of North Delaware, and Haddonfield is of course way into South Jersey...

...that said, I've called him Tim in the past

but his older brother never ran 8:58 indoors.  Now that I've at least figured out his name, I might now need to start calling him Baracus because that was a pretty B.A. effort in the 3200.

Its almost suprising that he "only" ran 4:14 on the end of their 10:10 DMR. Methinks that this could add up to a good 4xmile with teammate Ben Potts running 4:16.85 and Colin Baker owning 4:09 1600m credentials from last spring.  A definite A-Team in the making should they all be healthy and rolling, it could be quite the road trip for them down to Greensboro in the spring

They should be able to fit the squad, a coach or two and maybe even Marielle Hall in the van. 

So anyway, the throwdown of the meet in my eyes was the 8:58.81 meet record from Tim Vitez.  This is a guy who at his best has shown flashes of huge potential as a distance runner.  Still looks young, developing well, light on his feet, good turnover, and now has an MoC title of his very own...and poofy/frizzy hair.

Jon Vitez will join a roster filling up fast with sub-9 guys at Princeton.  It might be time to change Brian Leung's nickname from 50-Yen to Clubber Lang just to be consistent.


Not too far behind Baracus was Livingston junior Jeremy Elkaim, who improved upon his outdoor PR of 9:07 with a shocking 9:00.95.  I became a lifelong fan of Mr. Elkaim after his reported tirade at the Essex County x-c meet.  Not to condone "poor sportsmanship" but to condone profanity...I envision a primal f-bomb being dropped in the chute by him.  At that point in the season I wondered if Elkaim would run 14:57 at Holmdel.  Alas, things went haywire for him thereafter and 14:57 would have come up short anyhow. 

The boys 1600 was also about atonement a bit for Union Catholic's DJ Thornton.  A slightly under the radar talent coming into his senior year, x-c was not to be for him, but now he is a Meet of Champions winner.  Pat Schellberg had a tremendous year, he really is a top tier national class miler, who just had a slightly less than his best race when another guy came on strong and was hungry for the win.  Not trying to second guess, but perhaps the time focus clouded the clarity of purpose a bit.  Meet of Champions titles are not easy to come by and should never be taken for granted...and I'm not saying Schellberg did that.  I'd expect that the clock will be thrown out the window outdoors for him and the win is going to be the thing. 


The boys 800m went as I called it to junior Kevin Byrne, jr.  Meet of Champs titles are all in the family now.
Does that mean Kevin, jr. should now be called Meathead?

Guess not, he's not an in-law.  Either way, excellent race for the young one, his career is starting to get pretty good. 

On the girls side, the 3200 was a decisive win for Highland's Megan Venables, who looks like a strong favorite to be the top gun in cross this fall.  Ajee Wilson followed up a great relay split at Easterns with her first sub-5 of the season, and a 1600 win to add to her 800 title from last year.  Caitlinn Orr was my pick going, as she seemed to be winning comfortably and running fast coming in.  I underestimated the talents of Megan Tiernan a bit, but also had a rooting bias towards Bernards' Kristin Smoot.  Excellent race from RBC's Molly McNamara to nab 2nd, and still an indoor best 2:14.57 for Smoot in 5th. 

It seems a bit odd to be 2 days away from the first day of spring track practice as the Meet of Champs just wound up and we're still a week from the national meets, but that's the way it goes. 

Once again, the moral of the story here...Jon Vitez...B.A.