2018 NY Boys XC Preview: CHSAA

CHSAA Preview

New York State XC Season Guide - 2018

Replay

For the second year in a row in 2017, Xavier stormed to the CHSAA title, defeating St. Anthony's by a 35-65 score at Van Cortlandt Park. Behind a great senior top 5 of Josef Raphael Oettl, Aidan Donahue, Michael Crorkin, Sawyer Gwyn-Rowson, and Fergus Macdonnell, the Knights posted a 171 TR on the season and took 2nd place in Federations.

Though Saint Anthony's ended up finishing ranked in NY's top 10 after some early season struggles with injuries, the focus of attention for the Friars was on their senior frontrunner Mason Gatewood who won three major titles (Manhattan Eastern States, CHSAA, Federation) and won a spot at Foot Locker Nationals. Gatewood was one of three NY runners who finished the year with a speed rating over 190 TR, the first CHSAA runner to do so since Fordham Prep's Conor Lundy in 2015.

Xavier and St. A's Gatewood represented a year of elite top performances for the CHSAA in 2017 instead of the more competitive action of 2016. Xavier totaled only 35 points in the CHSAA championship last year, and only two teams scored under 100. Gatewood captured the title by 10 seconds over Aidan Donahue in 2018, while in the year before St. Peter's Ryan Tierney won by a lean at the tape over Xavier's Giancarlo Cipri.

Teams

Last year there was a lot of good news for the CHSAA heading into September as a huge chunk of 2016's talent was returning for the 2017 season. This year the news is not quite so pretty.

In 2017 there were 6 guys returning with a 170+ TR and 18 at 160+. This year those numbers are just 1 and 10, and the one guy with a 170 rating is Tom Appenheimer from Cardinal O'Hara of Buffalo. In the list of the CHSAA's twenty top returners for 2018, runners are averaging 7 less TR points than the guys who were in their spots last year. Four of the CHSAA's mainstay programs were very badly hit by graduation losses, including Xavier, St. Peter's, St. John the Baptist, and Kellenberg. Those four squads begin the year an average of 18 TR points behind last year's speed ratings, a drop of 54 seconds per runner.

But in every cloud of dark ugly data there are plenty of silver linings. St. Anthony's has won 19 CHSAA titles, two more than old-time power Bishop Loughlin and four more than Chaminade, and this year the top-rated Friars have their eyes set on that 20th crown with a squad rated a little behind last year's team but with maybe even more potential. It's hard to make anything happy and sparkly out of a champion team's loss of its top 5, but Xavier is still projected as the second strongest team in the CHSAA and just needs a little infusion of talent into its young squad to make the good times roll again. Another traditional power that is rated well behind last year's team is Chaminade, but the Flyers moved up a place in the projections, and that shows there is likely to be good competition among the top 10 teams of the CHSAA.

Perhaps the most exciting news for those who love the underdogs is that a quartet of teams that had not sniffed the top 6 of the CHSAA for a few years are starting to shake up the conference standings. Regis finished in the top 4 for the first time in 16 years in 2017.  Iona Prep was 6th, and the Gaels haven't been in the top 4 since 1997. Along with a resurgent Monsignor Farrell that is rated 4th in preseason projections and Archbishop Molloy at 7th, the four nouveau-riche-in-talent squads should be providing some nice looks for the CHSAA while some of traditional powers try to make some big lineup adjustments.

In the Monsignor Martin championship of the Buffalo All Catholic league, St. Joseph Collegiate looks to replace St. Francis as champion and resume its customary place on the throne.

Individuals

Mason Gatewood and the top 6 finishers from last year's CHSAA championship are gone. The 7th guy from last year is named Matthew Payamps, and he spent the first part of the year putting up some pretty spectacular numbers in track alongside Gatewood. Together with his fellow Friar senior Brendan Dearie who was 10th in last year's CHSAA, Payamps is hoping to get a little revenge against the XC gods who saddled St. Anthony's with enough early season injuries to put a crimp on the final results. Mason Gatewood entered last season with a TR less than the ones that Payamps and Dearie have going into 2018, so the duo are hoping to grab some of the same magic from their former teammate. The other returner from last year's CHSAA top 10 is Iona Prep's Pedro Bravo, and the most interesting news with the Gael frontrunner is that he is only a junior.

Out west, Cardinal O'Hara's Tom Appenheimer is a prohibitive favorite to retain the Monsignor Martin crown.

St. Anthony's Mason Gatewood took the 2017 CHSAA championship by ten seconds over Xavier's Aidan Donahue.