The New Hampshire divisional state meets are this weekend

Going into the NH D1 Boys' State Champs on Saturday, Concord High (my alma mater) has the top seed in the 800m (Colin Conery, 1:56.48) and the 1600m (Aidan O'Hern, 4:17.97). Neither of these guys was even on the team that went 1-2-3-9-13-14-15 and the D1 XC State Champs last fall, and was one of the strongest NH teams in recent, and even distant, memory.

Looking at the overall performance lists, CHS has 1, 3, 5, 8, 9 in the 800m, 1, 4, 5 (and 8 of the top 17) in the 1600m, and 3 of the top 7 in the 3200m. That includes a total of nine kids, five of whom return in the fall; three of the four they're losing to graduation are 800m specialists.

So, not to get ahead of myself even though that's exactly what I'm doing, in the fall they will in all likelihood have a stronger XC team than they did last year. Not even included in this post yet are a freshman who's run 2:05, another freshman who's run 4:43, and a sophomore who's run 9:51 this spring. All three broke 16:30 on legitimate cross-country courses in 2017.

The nice thing is -- all of you fans of NH high-school track can livestream the D1 State Champs for free on Saturday on the New Hampshire Track and Field website. Unlike the Flotrack-Milesplit oligopoly, not only is there no charge for this service, but the commentators are excellent. Some of them are current coaches and people I've known for up to 30 years.

The D2 and D3 meets will take place on Sunday.