Running the Numbers for Great State Expectations

The New York State Track & Field Championships includes 19 scored events for both the boys and girls, so usually there are about 38 top seeded favorites entering the action, though sometimes as in the boys 200m last year there are two athletes sharing a top mark. In addition, Friday's first day action includes a mix of separate Division 1 and Division 2 championships in shorter distance running events and many of the field events along with overall finals in the 800m and 3000 / 3200m events. This can all lead to some confusion about who was the winner in an event, as maybe happened last year in the girls 4x400 where Rush-Henrietta crushed a 3:43.94 to win the D1 championship but finished 8 seconds slower and in 4th in Saturday's overall championship. Sometimes resources get stretched thin and legs may be too heavy to win in the final event of the day.

But taking last year's results, what can we expect for the top seeds? Do we see a lot of upsets, with some unknown from West Obscurity suddenly adding two feet to a jump due to the electrifying atmosphere at States? Or do the favorites basically take care of business?

The answer is that in the vast majority of cases, the favorites do live up to their top billing by either winning or finishing very close to the top. After a season of track athletes letting it all hang out at big invitationals and local championships, there are few secrets left in the bag.

On the girls side last year, 10 of the 19 events were won by the top seed (including the 100, 200, 400, 800), 3 other winners were second seeds, and 2 more were third seeds. Three of the remaining four events were won by seeds in the top 5, with 4th seeds Paula Salmon of Clara Barton winning the 100m hurdles and 4th seed Valerie Hinds of Kingston winning the shot put, and it was only a very minor shock (maybe 5 volts) when 5th seed Sammy Watson of Rush-Henrietta won the 1500m. The biggest upset for the girls was the aforementioned 4x400 where an 8th seed Suffern that had finished second to Rush-Henrietta in the D1 championship came back to knock more than 9 seconds off its pre-meet seed time and close out the meet by running away from the rest of the tired pack. Somehow though it seems a stretch to make a dark horse out of a team that had 800m winner Kamryn McIntosh on the anchor and 2nd place 200m finalist Imani Solan on the second leg, even if the favored Mounties were unable to overtake Bronxville in the 4x800 shortly before.

For the boys the story was scarcely any different. Again 10 of the 19 favorites held serve, and three were second seeds, and one was a third seed. Three fourth seed winners included Zack Warden of Newburgh in the 200m, Conor Lundy of Fordham Prep in the 1600m, and Mike Palmer of Maine-Endwell in the Pentathlon. Josh Linster of Long Beach qualified as a bit of a dark horse in the 100 as a 6th seed, and Fayetteville-Manlius's Kyle Barber would definitely rate the upset tag as the 10th seed in the 800m, but a prescient previewer with perhaps some inside info wrote last year that Barber "could very well surprise some talented runners." And as with the Suffern girls, an FM runner would need to be running in a boot to be considered just an outside shot.