| Look 5: Who Won the Combined Titles? | ||||
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Five more breakdowns of the nationals' scores based on the combined titles remain to be revealed, and we'll start with the boys and girls combo for the indoor season. The New Jersey guys had a 78 point cushion over the NY guys, but that just wasn't enough against an NY girls squad that rolled up the 163 points. NJ barely held off Virginia for 2nd place, and Pennsylvania was led by its strong guys contingent to 4th place. None of the top four states had balanced scoring, skewing toward the girls for NY and VA and toward the boys for NJ and PA. 5th place Florida split its 86 points at 44-42 however. |
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| The second combo breakdown to be unveiled is for the boys and girls outdoor score. Clearly this was going to go all NY's way with the girls far out in front and the guys a close 2nd in North Carolina. New Jersey was clear in 2nd, but the battle for 3rd place was a photo finish with Florida getting the lean over Virginia (without Rachel McArthur who won the Brooks PR 800 meters) by a half point. Pennsylvania took 5th at 116, and then there was a mad scramble by five states that finished just shy of 100 for the 6th through 10th spots. |
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| Third up is the boys combo total for the indoor and outdoor nationals, and this is where the New Jersey guys are the dominators with a sweep of both top podium spots after scoring 111 indoors and 110 outdoors. The Pennsylvania guys rode their indoor 2nd place and 97-76 split to a 2nd place finish, and the NY guys used their big outdoor 2nd place finish to come up for 3rd, just 3.5 points ahead of Virginia. A balanced Texas squad edged out Florida by a point for the 5th spot. |
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| In the most lopsided of the combo totals, the New York girls finished more than 150 points ahead of 2nd place Virginia for the girls indoor-outdoor title. New Jersey was 2 points behind Florida at indoors and 3 points ahead at outdoors, and that adds up to a 3rd place finish with 154 points to FL's 153. Ohio edged out four other states for the 5th spot. |
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The grand finale combo loads up everything, boys and girls indoors and outdoors. Unless you started reading at this point, the results cannot be surprising. New York finished short of the 500 mark
but still 117 points ahead of New Jersey, with Virginia almost another
50 back in 3rd. Florida held off Pennsylvania for 4th, and the final
spot on a 6-place podium would go to Texas by a close margin over Ohio. |
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The final kudos are for two athletes and two relay teams who ran up the most points combined in the indoor and outdoor nationals. On the girls side, the answer is easy, since though there were a lot of tremendous performances, no one besides NJ's Alyssa Wilson could put together a portfolio at nationals that included three 1sts (indoor and outdoor shot put and the discus), a 2nd (hammer throw), and a 5th (weight throw) that powered her to 40 points, the javelin being the only throwing event she did not compete in. For the guys, Florida's Tyrese Cooper matched Wilson's 40 points with an indoor-outdoor sweep of the 200 and 400 events. You would think that would be enough to claim the title of biggest points poobah for the guys, but it only earned Cooper the honor of taking the most individual 1sts. Pennsylvania's Jordan Geist was throwing his weight around a lot at nationals, and he did it well enough to capture three 1sts in the indoor and outdoor shot put and the hammer throw and two 2nds in the weight throw and discus for a gigantic total of 46 points. Geist by himself outscored more than half of the states in the nation. The top relay team on the boys' side was NJ's East Orange squad that doubled up for a total of four wins in the shuttle hurdle and 4x400 relays. On the girls' side, NY's Shoreham-Wading River doubled in the 4xMile and also took the outdoor 4x800. |
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