2010 Indoor Div I Preview - Boys

The 2010 Indoor Division Championship Meets begin today and continue through the weekend.

The DI meet is Saturday morning (beginning at 9:00 a.m.), and among boys teams, Andover is the clear favorite. The Golden Warriors have the State's fastest sprinter, and the top seeds in all three relays. However, there are no points awarded for being seeded first, and there are reasons to believe that St. John's Prep has a good shot to pull off an upset. Whichever way it goes, I expect those two teams to be duking it out with scores near 50 points. After that, a handful of teams -- including Methuen, Newton South, Newton North, Weymouth, and Xaverian -- will be fighting for third with scores in the low 20's.

I might as well go out on a limb and predict the top three teams, in order:

1. St. John's Prep
2. Andover
3. Xaverian


Herewith, a preview of the individual events, in roughly the order they will be run:

High Jump

The high jump as contested in the big meets is always a different beast than the event contested in dual meets. The bar starts much higher, and the field is quickly whittled down to a few scorers. Two jumpers (Toby Belton from St. John's Shrewsbury and Nick Staley from B.C. High) have jumped 6-8. After that, it will be a free-for-all. St. John's Prep (SJP) will have 6-4 jumper Jack Durkin. Andover has two jumpers seeded at 6-2. My entire case for SJP is that they will get the points that they are supposed to get (maybe a few more) and Andover will not get all the points they are supposed to get. The high jump could decide the issue early. If the Andover jumpers do well, forget my prediction. But, if I'm right (big if), score it SJP 6, Andover 2.

1 Mile

Xaverian's John Bleday will win. Andover's Simon Voorhees is seeded second, but he will have his hands full with Weymouth's Steve Sollowin and Methuen's Andrew Stamatopulos and Ben Pare. Newton North's Ezra Lichtman is seeded 6th and is a threat as well. Methuen is always great at peaking for the big meets, and I think this will be no exception. I'll give Voorhees 4th, and Andover 4 points.

600m

The 600 in these big meets is always a crazy race, and results are often wildly different than the form chart. Andover's Mark Vetere has the top seed (1:22.74), and I give him the nod for the win, but it won't be easy. For one, there's Somerville freshman Andre Rolim, who has somewhat spectacularly run 1:23.15, and Durfee's Scott Souza, seeded second at 1:23.06. SJP's Mike Galasso is seeded 4th, and needs to get those points for the Prep. With some trepidation, I'll say 10 for Andover and 4 for the Prep, although the results might be upside down.

1000m

The Prep's Chris Oesterlin has the top seed by over a second at 2:31.82, and is the clear favorite in this race. He'll face fierce challenges from Weymouth's Chris Dooley and Newton South's Yuji Wakimoto. Andover has two runners seeded in the top ten, and I'm going to say Adam Vetere fights into sixth to pick up a point. Score it 10 for SJP and 1 for Andover.

Shot Put

Switching to the field events, the shot put is a critical event for the Prep. While Lowell's Ryan Davila is the heavy favorite (no pun intended), having thrown 61 feet this season, I'll pick the Prep's Sean Enos for second. To earn those points, he'll have to throw at or better than his seed mark of 52 feet, and he'll be dealing with the likes of Newton North's Conor Ebbs, who has a monster throw of 53-7 to his credit. But I'm sticking with my prediction that SJP earns 8 points here.

300m Final

Back to the oval and the finals of the 300m. SJP Senior Jared Kadich is seeded half a second faster than anyone else in the field at 35.29 and it would be folly to pick against him. Andover has Kerrick Stevens (seeded 5th), and the Prep has Chris Crosby (seeded 7th). I expect to see them both make the finals, but perhaps in the slower of two heats. That's not necessarily a disadvantage. I'll go out on a fairly flimsy limb here and say that Crosby picks up a point by finishing 6th, and Stevens doesn't score. Of course, this assumes that both runners are competing and aren't being saved for the relays. Not every runner can handle two hard 300s and a scorching relay leg. Well, we'll see, but I'll still tally this 11 for the Prep and none for Andover.

2 Mile

The 2-Mile seems wide open to me. Methuen's Jared Reddy has the top seed (9:37), but Shrewsbury's John Murray is better than his 9:50 seed time, as is Brookline's Chernet Sisay. I wouldn't be surprised to see Methuen's Tyler Sullivan or Newton South's David Mely in the top three either. Newton North's Jake Gleason is seeded 7th, and Andover's Nick Shumacher is seeded 8th. Anything could happen, but I hesitate to give Andover any points in this event.

55 Dash

Chris McConnell is the defending State Champ, top seed (6.43), and the odds-on favorite to repeat in the dash. Medford's DeAundrey Williams (6.50) is the only one close. 10 points Andover.

55 Hurdles

Brockton's Sidney Chambers is the top seed here (7.62), but Xaverian (remember them) has Nick McDaniels seeded at 7.71, and could win the whole thing.

Long Jump

Newton South's Ross MacDonald reminds me a little bit of Ben Fulton. He (MacDonald) is the top seed in the long jump, and if he's on, will be tough to beat. Andover's Mark Vetere is seeded 5th, but it's not a stretch to see him finishing higher, and I'm going to put him third, earning six points for Andover.

4x800 Relay

If my math and my predictions are both correct, SJP will be holding a slim lead (37-33) going into the relays. Won't Andover dominate here? Not necessarily. Let's start with the 4x800. Andover has the top seed at 8:04, but that's not going to stand up for the win, not with the likes of Methuen and Peabody in the mix. These teams always make huge improvements in the latter part of the season. I like Methuen for the win. The other consideration is how Andover spreads its runners over the relays. The Golden Warriors swept the relays at the D1 State Relays meet, but that was with no individual events. Surely they must run out of bodies at some point? Anyway, I'll say that Andover finished 4th here, and that SJP will improve enough to take 5th. 4 - 2 Andover.

4x200

Andover has absolutely owned this event all year long, and even though I would never ever want a meet to come down to the 4x200 (those baton passes are too scary!), I see no reason that Andover won't blow everyone away here. The Prep has had great teams in this event in the past, but not this year. 10-0 Andover.

4x400

It's perfect that the top two teams in the final event are the top two teams in the meet. If you've followed my script so far, Andover will go into the final event up 47-39. The truth is, they'll probably win or place here as well, and win the meet. Even if SJP runs out of their minds, they won't be able to overtake an Andover team that is just too deep.

So I lied at the beginning. Seeding is destiny. Andover will win, and the Prep will fall short after a noble effort.

Unless, of course, one tiny thread unravels -- one handoff goes awry, one runner tweaks a hamstring, one athlete picks the wrong moment to shed their shirt on the infield. All I know is, this is a meet you'll want to watch to the very end.