The last week of October means it is time for Suffolk County's biggest race/meet of the year -- the Section XI Division Championship. The rules/procedures to qualify are a little bit confusing, but it is basically Suffolk County's version of the Federation Meet. In theory, it has all of the top teams and top individuals competing in the same race for the best team in Section XI. Additionally, the top runner of the meet is typically named the Runner of the Year/MVP.
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Suffolk County is divided into eight leagues that each have between six and eight teams. The Division Meet takes the top two teams from all of their respective leagues to make up the first 16 teams. After that, teams may petition to get in based off of their best performances throughout the season (similar to making a bid for Federations). The petition process is in place for the teams that find themselves in a difficult league (League 2 for the boys and League 4 for the girls stand out this year). The petition gives these teams a chance to compete in the championship race even if they finished third or worse in their league.
If your team isn't deep through five runners, but you have runners on the team that are good individually, you can enter them to race as an individual and they will not factor into the team scores. This is important because the Division finish factors into the All-County selection process which is selected after the Sectional Meet. After the race is run, the results are split up into the four divisions. Runners earn All-Division honors by finishing in the top 20, after the results are separated. League 1 and 2 make up Division 1, League 3 and 4 make up Division 2, League 5 and 6 make up Division 3, and League 7 and 8 make up Division 4.
If your team does not meet the requirements and you do not get in with your petition/run your fastest athletes in the Championship race, you can still enter your team in the "Team Qualifier" race. This gives your team one last chance to qualify for the Sectional Meet. You need to average under 23:00 for the girls and 19:30 for the boys for your first five runners. The race also needs to be held at Sunken Meadow and be run on the 5k course. To qualify to run in the Sectional Meet as an individual, you have to run under 22:30 on the girl's side and 18:30 on the boy's.
For every runner that is not in their team's top seven, they will have a chance to run (at least) one more 5k at Sunken Meadow in the "Individual Qualifier" race. This is the biggest of all of the races and can often have 300 people + in it. Since the team populations have not returned to pre-covid numbers, it won't be the biggest of all time but expect a very wide range of ability levels to compete in this race.
Since this weekend was not deep with results, we are going to spend a bit of time previewing the Division Championship. Some teams will have freshmen, slightly injured runners, or even new runners step up to make a huge difference in the team scoring. Some teams will hold runners out in order to have them run in the Frosh/Soph meet and other teams may even train through Divisions with their eyes on the "bigger" prize at the Sectional Meet on November 4th. We are going to focus more on the team matchups in this with an overall individual preview later.
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Beginning with the girls, and working up from the smallest Divisions, we will start with Division 4. This one may be the hardest of all of the Division races to predict. This is largely due to how League 7's Mount Sinai essentially has not run a full team yet this season. They ran two total runners (very good runners) at multiple invitational meets and it leaves big question marks about the rest of their top five. Last week, they lost a dual meet to Bayport-Blue Point so they are definitely vulnerable. On paper, they should win this over Port Jefferson, Bayport-Blue Point, Pierson, Babylon and Southampton (in no order). If they continue to not run everyone, look for one of those schools to be your winner and if it's Pierson or Port Jefferson, they will establish themselves as the favorite for the Class D title the following week.
Division 3 has a very clear favorite. Sayville is the second ranked team in the state for Class B by Milesplit and will be extremely difficult to beat. Sayville is good through 8-9 runners and also has some low sticks up front. Sayville is led by Mullane Baumiller who will be looking to break 20 minutes for the first time on Tuesday. She has been running well all season and has a chance to lead her team to the podium at the state meet. Behind them, Shoreham Wading River looks to be the strongest team. They are led by Olivia Pesso who has an excellent chance to make the State Meet as an individual the following week.
Division 2 is probably the most interesting and deep division. Based on last week's results, Northport would enter as a slight favorite. East Islip and West Babylon have been going back and forth all year and are VERY close. Northport and East Islip are both led by their group of three sisters. Northport has the three Wickard sisters and East Islip has the three Simonetti sisters. West Babylon's parents did not plan quite as well ahead 15 years ago, and they are left with only a pair of sisters in the Garcias. Eastport South Manor is also a team that can not be slept on and they have a strong front runner in Anna Gansrow.
Division 1 is also a tough call in terms of predictions. There is not one school in League 1 or League 2 that has a team that is ranked in the top ~35 in the state. Perennial top teams like Bay Shore, Ward Melville, and Sachem East seem to be having down years. The highest ranked team is William Floyd but they get a large boost from their superstar #1 runner Zariel Macchia. This is going to come down to whose fifth runner has a big day and stops their scoring as early as possible. William Floyd will have one point after one runner, but can their fourth and fifth be close enough to win their first title since before we were afraid of Y2K (results I could find go back to 1998)? This race may be the closest of the day.
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Boys Division 4 looks like it is going to be Port Jefferson's race to lose. They have the deepest small division team and a couple of runners who should go under 18 minutes. Port Jefferson is a heavy Class D favorite, they are currently ranked in the top four in the state. They are led by senior Brendan Capodanno and sophomore Colin Veit. Division 4 will most likely only have four schools entered in the Championship race because the at-large berths will go to the larger/deeper schools. Port Jefferson has a chance to claim a plaque from the State Meet for the first time in a very long time. They're ranked fourth now but with some improvement, they may be able to get a plaque at the state meet. They should have their sights set on the Sectional Meet and the State Meet in the following weeks.
Division 3 will be a clash of styles between the front runners of Westhampton Beach and the good depth and packs of a few other schools. Miller Place has shown they are a force to be reckoned with for the next couple of years. It MAY be too early, but young squads tend to improve a lot at the end of the season. They skyrocketed up the rankings into the top ten this past week after their performance at Burnt Hills. Shoreham and Harborfields have been battling throughout most of the season as well and may be able to be in the mix. All four teams were ranked very closely in the state rankings until Miller Place jumped 14 spots. As we have mentioned previously...if someone's fifth runner has a big day, a team could jump 2-3 spots because of the smaller nature of the race.
Division 2 seems like a two school race; Northport, the defending champion, and Eastport South Manor. Eastport, similar to Miller Place, may be a year or so away but they are a well coached team that generally does a very good job peaking at the right time of the season. Northport probably has the best top four of any team in the county but their five is a ways back. Eastport will need their pack to move up to offset Northport's strong runners up front. The other teams do not seem to have either the front runners, or the depth, to be able to challenge either of these two teams for the second biggest Division's title. Eastport is currently ranked ahead of Northport in the state rankings but Eastport went to the very friendly rated Nassau Coaches Invitational and Northport was missing one of their top 4 at Burnt Hills.
Division 1 will be a great race. You have three very evenly matched teams. These schools raced at Manhattan and they barely finished apart from each other in the merge. Ward Melville and Bay Shore had a dual meet a week before Division's and Bay Shore won by one point. All three teams may lose to Northport in the merge but the Division 1 race is going to be a battle. Jake Gogarty ran his second great race in four days when he beat Ward Melville's Brian Leibowitz in their dual meet (an excellent time of 13:07). Commack beat Bay Shore in their earlier dual meet but it seems like Bay Shore has gotten another guy back. In the rankings, all three teams are very close and they have all faced each other this dual meet season and each one has lost one time. Commack will need to hope one of their runners can step up and become a low stick because that is the difference between them and Ward Melville and Bay Shore right now. Melville and Bay Shore both have runners that will finish very high in this race.
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As far as the individual races go, two runners on the girls side have separated themselves from the pack. For most of the previous two years, there was only one runner who had been separated (William Floyd's Zariel Macchia). This year, Bayport-Blue Point's Sophia McInnes has made tremendous improvements from her already stellar track season last year (4:36/10:08) and has entered the conversation as one of the overall best in the state. Macchia remains the favorite, as she should, but McInnes has an excellent chance to become one of only 28 girls to break 19 minutes at Sunken Meadow and it would be of no surprise if she goes significantly under. The last few weeks she has absolutely been on fire with her performances. Her first two invites and Queensbury and Bowdoin Park were good but nothing like what was to come. Since then, she won her letter race at Manhattan by 18 seconds in 14:50 to become one of the fastest Section XI runners ever to run the course, crushed the second half of the race at the Burnt Hills Invite to lose to only Saratoga's Emily Bush, and then ran a 14:45 for 2.5 miles in a dual meet. 14:45 is the fastest time we could find looking back at the old Saint Anthony's Invitational results and the most recent results from the Covid year. After these two, Northport's Mia Wickard seems to be next and then breakout star Alicia DeFillipis is the highest rated (The Nassau Coaches Meet is usually very highly speed rated though).
On the boys side, Westhampton Beach's Max Haynia has been the number one ranked runner in the county all year. He also comes back with the best track credentials and fastest Sunken Meadow personal best. Look for him to run strong and break away at some point. It would not be surprising to see him win by 10+ seconds. The next ranked runner is Bay Shore's Jake Gogarty whomst we mentioned before. His highest rating comes from the Nassau Coaches meet as well though and may be slightly inflated. Behind them, there are a handful of very close runners that will be looking to challenge Gogarty for at least second. Ward Melville's Brian Leibowitz who we have already mentioned, Doug Antaky from Smithtown, Eastport's Luke Pfeiffer and Haynia's teammate Trevor Hayes should all be in the mix for top five or better. If the weather is good and Haynia goes for it, we could see a time in the very low 16's.
Only a couple of teams decided to race this weekend. Connetquot girls and Northport girls raced at the Edward Bowes meet at Ocean Breeze and the Section 1 Coaches invitational respectively. Connetquot continued to have their strong top two finish high up in the race. Olivia DiGaetano and Marissa McDougall finished third and seventh respectively and they both broke 20 minutes. Northport seemed to have a bit of an off day and also seemed to be missing one of their normal top five. Despite missing Finnley Wickard, they still got the team win. They go into the Division meet looking more vulnerable than they were a couple weeks ago.
On Wednesday morning we will have a much clearer picture of the team and individual races. Look for some breakout races and some teams to be the best they have all season.