Shippensburg U. – Predicted thunderstorms never happened and pre-meet predictions seemed to follow suit. After finishing 6th for 800M at Districts (1:54.48 outdoor PR) and ranked 14th going in, Grayson Ruffner had an uphill battle ahead. A crowded field of 15 left no room for error. He managed to stay up in the lead pack and found himself in fourth heading into the backstretch of lap 2 maintaining that position through the finish. His time of 1:52.00 is a PR by 1.6 seconds and ranks #3 Wiss All-Time. He also finished ahead of all five guys who beat him at Districts a week ago.   

Gray’s 1600M on Friday morning kind of went as predicted. Hitting 4:17.25, close to his PR, only got him 20th! With the winner setting an all-time PA best and a National Federation Record of 3:57.08, it took 4:10 to medal. One of the strongest mile fields ever at the state meet. (Our own Nick Crits’ winning time of 4:11.69 back in 2008 wouldn’t have gotten him on the medal stand!)

Another pre-meet prediction got flipped as Dom Sheppard had been ranked in the top 5 for 300 hurdles in PA all season. He managed to just sneak into the finals as no one seemed to run well in the pre-lims. Running from lane 1, he had problems over every hurdle and crossed the line in 8th in 39.52 (His best of 37.95 would have earned him silver.) But a medal is a medal and he’ll be back.                                             

The Friday afternoon 4×4 pre-lims were brutal. Running in heat 4 of 4, we watched team after team drop HUGE season bests in the heats before us. (Some dropping times by 2 and 3 seconds.) Our 3:20.81, although not a bad time (3:20.97, 3:20.55 last two weeks), keeping status-quo wouldn’t cut it here. 12th place and out of it.  (Jonah Sydney 50.75, Dom 50.87, Johnson 49.90, Ruffner 49.11)