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Christian Brothers Academy made another big statement when the Colts blitzed the competition in Saturday's Eastern States Championship race at the 49th Manhattan Invitational at historic Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx.
CBA, ranked No. 1 in NJ and No. 5 nationally, poured three runners across the line in the top 13, had a 1-5 spread of 28 seconds, and averaged a very fast 12:52.3, No. 3 in school history, en route to a convincing 72-159 victory over Corning of N.Y. CBA put six runners ahead of Corning's No. 3 man.
This is the first title Eastern States title for CBA since winning a second straight in 2017, and it's the 18th Eastern title overall for CBA. CBA has won seven of their Eastern titles since 2009.
CBA's top seven were senior Nick Sullivan, eighth over the 2.5-mile layout in 12:40.4, sophomore Joe Barrett, ninth in 12:41.4 (just off CBA's soph. record of 12:35.3 by Blaise Ferro), junior Jack Falkowski, 13th in 12:48.8, senior Lucas Ward, 21st in 13:06, and senior Zach Shroba, 26th in 13:08.7. Sophomore Ryan Schmitt was 27th for CBA in 13:11.5, and junior Alex Kemp was 50th in 13:28.0. Kemp, usually one of CBA's top five, caught a cramp with 600 to go and fell back, according to CBA coach Sean McCafferty.
For some perspective on just how fast CBA's 12:53.2 average is, CBA's school record average at Vanny is 12:44.4, which came in 2013 and was the course record at the time. It's second fastest time avg. ever is 12:44.6 in 2012, and the 2011 CBA team that won the Nike National Championships averaged 13:01.2.
Additionally, the 2013 CBA squad that averaged 12:44.4 at Vanny went on to average a course record 15:52.2 at Holmdel Park when the Colts won the Meet of Champions title that season. So using that conversion, CBA's current pack would be on pace to run around 16 flat at Holmdel.
CBA also received a record breaking performance from Wyatt Falkowski, who ran 8:18.6 to win the 1.5-mile Freshmen C race to break CBA's long-standing freshman school record of 8:19.6 that was set in 1979 by Paul Marabito. CBA won the team titles in the freshman and JV races to make it a clean sweep.