Fast History of Fast
During
the four decades since the second coming of the Manhattan College
Invitational, the meet has steadily grown to almost stupendous
proportions. A hugely popular meet back in the 1920s (but without
girls), the current version of the meet kicked off in 1973 and by the
end of the decade, the girls had started to become a force on the heels
of the exploits of runners like Stony Brook's Laura Whitney.
The meet has steadily added races and become one of the top three
invitationals in the country. One of the 40 scheduled races gets the gun
every 5 to 12 minutes to keep the hordes of runners flowing through to
the screaming masses perched on the Cemetery Hill overlook or forming a
deafening gauntlet at the finish. The transformation has been especially
huge for the girls, whose long-time featured Eastern States race has
exploded from a high-status 10 team race just ten years ago to a showdown
of national powers with 25 teams slated to toe the mark nowadays.
The modern era kicked off in 2004 when the perennial girls national superpower Saratoga Springs won the Eastern States for the next to last time and the Blue Streaks' Nicole Blood broke the 14:00 minute barrier. The course has had many different variations over the last decade, so citing a record time is problematic, but in 2007 Carly Seymour of Central Cambria (pictured above) ran a 13:55 to set the then lowest official time.
Aisling Cuffe of Cornwall was a two-time winner of the ES, and in 2010 she ran a 13:58 and matched Blood's TR of 159 for the top rated score there. In 2011, Jillian Fanning of Fayetteville-Manlius took 1st and led her team to its fifth straight Eastern States title. The streak was broken in 2012 when Tatnall's Reagan Anderson captured the win and led her team to an upset of FM. Mary Cain of Bronxville posted the top time at the 2012 Manhattan in the A race when she ran a 14:03.
In 2013 it was Unionville that bested Fayetteville-Manlius, and Kennedy Weisner of Elk County Catholic had the fastest time in Eastern States and Manhattan with a 14:09. In 2014 Fayetteville-Manlius returned to the top position, and Heritage's Weini Kelati was the top runner in the race, while Corning's Jessica Lawson was tops at the meet, running in Race C.
Last year Fayetteville-Manlius won its seventh Eastern States title in nine years. Lawson pushed the time down to 13:53.9, more than a second better than Seymour's record from eight years before.
The Eastern States is rightly considered to have the kiss of gold for those with national championship aspirations.The team that has won the ES has gone on to take the national crown at NXN in 8 of the last 12 years, plus two other times that the runner-up has claimed the national title. Likewise, the individual winners have done well in the nationals, and Cornwall's Aisling Cuffe ran to the Footlocker title after winning the ES in 2010, and Warwick Valley's Aislinn Ryan won the FLN in 2004 and followed it with an ES victory in a downpour in 2005.