State Meet Preview: Division II

Newbury Park's dynamic senior duo of Nico Young and Jace Aschbrenner expect to go 1-2 while leading the Panthers to a second consecutive Division II title and trip to NXN. (Credit: Patrick Corsinita)

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 Boys Division II Preview

• Runner to beat: Nico Young, Newbury Park
• Team to beat: Newbury Park
• Entries

Individual competition

Getting to watch Nico Young run is worth the price of admission. Period. The major question here isn't who's going to win, it's if Young can't just lower the Division II individual record of  14:52 by Loyola's Elias Gedyon in 2010 but if he can run the fastest state final time ever over the relatively flat Woodward Park course. That standard, 14:24 by Riverbank's German Fernandez in 2007, is 22 seconds faster than anyone has run. That's a major challenge but the senior appears up to it. After all, he got his season off to a ridiculously fast start by breaking Craig Virgin's national high school 3-mile record by 11 seconds, running 13:39.7 at the Woodbridge Invitational and hasn't shown any signs of slowing down. Young didn't just break the Riverside Championship Course record-his own, of course-in the Southern Section championships, he decimated it by a half-a-minute, becoming the only runner ever to dip under 14 minutes at 13:54.10. Oh yes, he's the defending champ in this division and his closest pursuer may very well be teammate Jace Aschbrenner, who also was under the old record last week at 14:23.20. Thousand Oaks' Michael Mireles was 10^th a year ago and La Costa Canyon's Caleb Niednagel was fourth, but has been slowed by the flu.

Team competition

Newbury Park scored just 77 points last year and four of the top six finishers return for the Panthers. That includes sophomore Colin Sahlman and junior Nicholas Goldstein who have improved from their 38^th and 39^th place finish a year ago. So, it would appear the race here is for second among the likes of Dana Hills, which was 73 points behind Newbury Park, Redlands East Valley that was only two points behind Dana Hills, a solid Whitney team out of the host Sac-Joaquin Section, Granada and De La Salle from the North Coast and San Diego Section champ Poway.