State of the Action: If you took the State Meet Race, and ran it three times, you could have gotten three very different results.  That's the kind of uncertainty here again, both in terms of the team and indivdiual dealings.  Ty Brownlow gets the favorite status, as he is the defending State Champion.  Noah Carey came back the week after his legs died out in the last 200m, and won the Fed Meet.  If his legs hadn't died out at States, he could have been the State Champ.  But they did, and Chris Tibbets of Sachem passed him to take second in that race.

Flash forward to Feds, where Tibbets teammate, Jon Lauer, ran into the same issues as Carey.  He was shoulder to shoulder with Carey until the last 200m, then faded.  If he didn't fade, he may have won Feds.  Different day, different race.  Stevie Schulz had been beating Brownlow all season, so regionals could see a return to that same finish.  And then there is Nathan Lawler, who broke a course record at Chenango out of the Class B race.  After missing the plane last year by mere seconds, the motivation is there.

Liverpool are the only top individuals with a team in play.  If they make it, look down the list, as they have three guys all in the qualifying position.  At the same time, their team could not make it, yet they have three individuals going.  A weird year, for sure.

Tracking Shot