(La Salle Academy freshman D.J. Principe unfazed by the competition at the Great American Cross Country Festival on Oct. 5)
It wasn’t a question on who would win on Monday. The question was by how much.
La Salle Academy’s young phenom D.J. Principe, one of the top ninth-graders in the country, did what everyone expected at the boys' Freshmen State Meet. He won and he won convincingly, building a sizable lead by the half-mile mark and coasting to a very-fast clocking of 12 minutes, 52.20 seconds for the 2.5-mile course at Burrillville Middle School. Mars Bishop, an outstanding underclassman from Barrington High, was more than 200 meters behind with a runner-up time of 13:29.03.
Principe was in race mode from the opening gun.
“With DJ, he always makes it look easy,” La Salle coach Ken Skelly said. “He takes every race seriously, no matter what. He always looks at it like a professional athlete and that he has a task to accomplish. We came up with a race plan on how to attack the course. We treated it like any other race.”
“Just 100 meters into the race, he already had a five-meter lead. By a half mile, he had a 40-50 meter lead,” he continued. “He got away pretty much after the first half mile and was able to control the race the way he wanted to.”
While there are more important races coming up in the next two weeks such as Saturday’s Class A Championship and the State Meet on Nov. 2, a race that Principe has a legitimate chance to battle for the individual crown, Skelly and his star runner had the frosh states circled on the calendar from the very beginning.
“You only get one chance to be a freshman and represent the team,” Skelly said. “He runs and works out with the varsity. He wanted to make sure he could be a part of the kids he has class with, who he has lunch with. He also wanted to make sure he brought his ‘A’ game.”
Principe has pretty much shown up with his ‘A’ game since becoming a member of the cross-country squad back in late August. Over the last two months, he has been one of the fastest runners in the state with the highlight of his fall season coming just a few weeks ago on Oct. 5 at the Great American Cross-Country Festival in N.C., where he was the second Rhode Islander and 28th overall in the Race of Champions, running an eye-popping 15:41.5 for the 5K distance, the best performance ever by a freshman at the meet. He came back just a week later at the prestigious Reebok Manhattan Invitational at historic Van Cortlandt Park and was 32nd overall, and again the best freshman, in the Eastern States Championship with a time of 12:58.7 for 2.5 miles.
“I would say with him we had a pretty good idea right at the Injury Fund how good he would be,” said Skelly, making reference to the season-opening meet where Principe blew the field away in the freshmen race by 1:33. “He has beaten the expectations of every coach…He’s blown away from his own expectations. But if you ask him, he’ll say it’s all about the team. He’ll do whatever it takes to help the team.”
***
With four of its finishers among the top 12, East Greenwich edged Smithfield, 57-61, for the team title in Monday’s meet. The foursome of Henry Penretta (14:18.71), Tim Sanzi (14:19.34), Jackson Cronin (14:23.24) and Jack Somer (14:25.85) took the ninth through 12th spots, respectively, for the Avengers. Willy Por was 20th overall for E.G. at 14:57.57.
The freshmen race had 213 finishers. Rounding out the top 10 were Scituate’s Matthew Vinacco (14:06.46), Bishop Hendricken’s Anthony Lanni (14:10.65), Smithfield’s Bob Bissitt (14:12.95), Hendricken’s Jeffrey Venter (14:13.47), La Salle’s Benjamin Carlisle (14:13.93) and Smithfield’s John Pagliaro (14:14.15).
For complete results, click here.