Category: Professional

By David Rogers. MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL, Minn. — Running a single mile in four and a half minutes is something a lot of people wish they could do, but relative few ever achieve it. Running a 4:40 mile pace over 10 consecutive miles puts you in elite company. And that is exactly where ZAP Endurance team member Andrew Colley is after placing 7th in the U.S. 10-Mile Championships, finishing the course in a blistering 46:47.

Colley lowered the long-standing ZAP club record for the 10-mile distance by a second, one of four ZAP Endurance athletes competing in the U.S. 10-Mile Championships.

ZAP teammate and former Appalachian State star harrier Tristan Van Ord lowered the club record on the women’s side by an astonishing 45 seconds, finishing what ZAP head coach Pete Rea described as a “hilly” course between the Twin Cities in 9th place among the 36 elite runners qualified to run in the women’s championship division. Her time of 53:13 was just a minute and a half behind Concord, Mass.-based winner, Fiona O’Keeffe’s 51:42.

ZAP Endurance had yet another Top 10 finisher in the men’s race. Josh Izewski ran the course in 47:06, exactly on one minute after Colorado Springs resident Hillary Bor (46:06) and only 19 seconds behind Colley’s ZAP club record pace.

Coming back from injury, one of ZAP’s top men’s team members, Tyler Pennel, showed steady progress in getting back to elite form by finishing 30th among the 48 elite athletes competing, in 48:38.

The U.S. 10-Mile Championships were run concurrently with the Medtronic Twin Cities 10-Mile open race, in which 8,469 road racers competed, 3,042 men and 5,401 women.

Colley runs with the leaders from the start

After watching the race first hand in the Twin Cities on Sunday, ZAP head coach Pete Rea said, “With this performance, Andrew Colley made an emphatic return to road racing in his first competitive run since April. He ran upfront in a very strong men’s field from the gun, passing the halfway point (5 miles) marker in a swift 23:17. By then, the lead pack was down to just 8 men, including Andrew.

“Between Mile 4 and Mile 7,” Rea added, “the course between Minneapolis and St. Paul is a grinding, long steady climb and that is where the lead pack began to splinter apart. Andrew found himself battling, really, between a string of runners over the final miles and into the sharp downhill finish.”

Van Ord runs within herself, avoids early burnout pace

On the women’s side, Rea said Van Ord took a slightly different approach compared to Colley’s race strategy.

“Tristin laid off an incredibly aggressive early pace in the women’s race,” Rea recalled for High Country Sports. “She clipped off nearly identical of 26:38 and 26:35, not cracking the top 10 until passing some of the early, exhausted leaders until she reached the crest of the climb at around the 7-mile mark. This is her second consecutive Top 10 finish at a U.S. Championship since joining the ZAP team.

Van Ord placed 8th on Sept. 5 at the U.S. 20k Championships hosted in New Haven, Conn. Since joining the ZAP roster of elite runners after graduating from App State in 2017, she has steadily lowered her personal bests, including four of her five primary distances in 2022 alone: 5,000m (15:45), 10 Miles (53:13), Half Marathon (1:12.31) and Marathon (2:29.32).

Izewski also takes measured approach with slightly slower pace in the last 5 miles

“For Sunday’s race in the Twin Cities, Josh followed Tristin’s more measured approach,” said Rea. “He passed the 5-mile marker in 23:29, then moved into the Top 10 by calling on his reserves to finish strong over the final mile of the race. His finishing time of 47:06 improved his personal best for the distance by nearly 20 seconds.”

 

By David Rogers. CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A moribund first half of NFL football morphed as disastrous for the Carolina Panthers on Oct. 2. Ahead 10-3 at halftime and tied 10-10 at the end of the third quarter, by game’s end the Panthers had lost to the visiting Arizona Cardinals, 26-16.

Three turnovers (2 pass interceptions and a lost fumble), as well as two turnovers on downs made life challenging for the Carolina offense.

At 6-1, Panther quarterback Baker Mayfield may be learning that size matters in the NFL. He had five passes batted down at the line of scrimmage by Cardinal defenders and now has an NFL-high of 11 pass deflections through just the first four weeks of the 2022 season.

Neither team was able to score in the first quarter but things looked up for Carolina early in the second period when outside linebacker Frankie Luvu stepped in front of a Kyler Murray pass for an interception — and ran it back 33 yards for a “Pick 6” TD.

The Panthers’ defense was up to the challenge of containing Murray and the Cardinals’ offensive weapons in the first half, limiting Arizona to just one field goal, a 33-yard effort by veteran placekicker Matt Prater with 3:34 remaining in the first half, after an 8-play, 50-yard drive.

But all the Panthers’ offense could claim as production in the first half was a 54-yard field goal by Eddy Piñeiro — and that as time expired at the end of the second quarter. The earlier five offensive possessions ended with a turnover on downs, two punts, a lost fumble and an interception. The longest drive was early in the second period: 35 yards in 8 plays that stalled at Carolina’s own 45 yard line.

In the third quarter, Arizona managed to scored a touchdown on a 9-play drive that covered 62 yards, ending when tight end Zach Ertz caught a 2-yard pass from Murray as he crossed the goal line. The Prater PAT tied the game at 10-10, and that is where it stayed into the fourth quarter when the Cardinals began to put the game out of reach with a field goal and two TDs on three consecutive possessions. And the possessions came after a punt by the Panthers, another pass interception, and a turnover on downs when Carolina was growing desperate to catch up with time running out.

About the batted down passes, head coach Matt Ruhle acknowledged in his post-game press conference that they are a problem.

“They (the batted down balls) showed up today. There is no denying that we have to get it fixed. For us, I think we have to go back and watch the tape… I do know we have to get it corrected. That’s too many…,” said Ruhle.

The Panthers head coach didn’t make excuses in talking about the offensive woes.

“A lot things that have to be corrected offensively, especially,” said Ruhle. “I thought our defense was kind of fighting and hanging in there and keeping it a close game — and just kind of waiting for the offense. In the end, I think the time of possession in the second half was brutal against our defense and, you know, our defense has to get off the field. Don’t get me wrong, but they just needed some spells. So, I think offensively we have to go back and look at everything and see what we can do better, see what we are doing well and try to fix what ails us right now because it took a toll on us tonight.”

If there was a glimmer of positives in the offense’s performance against the Cardinals, it was a late game rebound by star running back Christian McCaffery, who picked up over 100 yards from scrimmage (rushing plus pass receptions) for the third straight game this season. It was his 35th performance going over the century mark in 62 career games. Cleveland’s Nick Chubb, Miami’s Tyreek Hill and the New York Giants’ Saquon Barkley are the only other NFL players to record at least 100 scrimmage yards in three games this season.

Also notable: placekicker Eddy Piñeiro’s 54-yard field goal in the first half was the longest of his NFL career. His previous best was with the Chicago Bears against Denver, a 53-yarder. For the 2022 season, he is one of only three NFL kickers that are 100 percent on field goals with a minimum of eight attempts.

The Panthers will try to get back on the right track while facing two West Coast teams in the next two weeks, the San Francisco 49ers at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte on Oct. 9 (4:05 p.m. kickoff) and at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles against the Rams on Oct. 16.

SELECTED TEAM STATS

• Total Net Offense – CAR 220, ARI 338
• Net Yards Passing – CAR 180, ARI 206
• Net Yards Rushing – CAR 40, ARI 132
• 3rd Down Conversions – CAR 2-10 (20%), ARI 6-15 (40%)
• 4th Down Conversions – CAR 1-3 (33%), ARI 0-2 (0.0%)
• Penalties – CAR 6-76, ARI 7-61
• Fumbles Lost – CAR 1, ARI 0
• Interceptions as Turnovers – CAR 2, ARI 1
• Time of Possession – CAR 21:25, ARI 38:35

SELECTED INDIVIDUAL STATS

Passing

• ARI Kyler Murray 23-32-207, 2 TDs, 1 INT
• CAR Baker Mayfield 22-36-197, 1 TD, 2 INTs

Rushing

• ARI James Conner 15 carries, 55 yards
• ARI Eno Benjamin 5 carries, 36 yards
• CAR Christian McCaffery 8 carries, 27 yards
• ARI Kyler Murray 12 carries, 26 yards, 1 TD
• ARI Darrel Williams 4 carries, 19 yards
• CAR D.J. Moore 1 carry, 11 yards

Receiving

• ARI Marquise Brown 6 catches, 88 yards, 1 TD
• CAR Christian McCaffery 9 catches, 81 yards, 1 TD
• CAR D.J. Moore 6 catches, 50 yards
• ARI Zach Ertz 6 catches, 47 yards, 1 TD
• ARI Trey McBride 3 catches, 24 yards

By David Rogers. BLOWING ROCK, N.C.— Adding talent to an athletic team is always a good thing and Blowing Rock-based ZAP Endurance was busy over the summer, adding three rising, distance running stars.

It doesn’t hurt that all were collegiate champions.

Eric van der Els

van der Els is a native of Norwalk, Conn., and a recent graduate of the University of Connecticut.  At UConn, he won multiple Big East Conference championships, including titles in the outdoor 1500m and indoor 3,000m in 2022. His 3,000m performance set a Big East meet record of 7:52. Eric also scored a personal best for 5,000m of 13:36.2 in the spring, the event he ran at the NCAA meet and led the UConn men’s Distance Medley Relay to a 3rd place performance and school record at the Penn Relays.

van der Els was also the US junior champion and the Pan American junior Champion in 2017 in the 1500.

Ryan Ford

Ford hails from Huntsville, Ala., graduating from the University of Tennessee-Martin where he was the Ohio Valley Conference’s 5,000m Champion before finishing his collegiate career at Iowa State.

Ford played a key role as part of the 2021 Iowa State cross country team that finished runner up at the NCAA Championships. He was an all-Big 12 Conference selection in cross country and on the track in 2022, including personal bests of 28:34 for 10,000m and 13:34 for 5,000, the event in which he qualified to compete in the NCAA Championships.

Dan Schaffer

Schaffer is a 2022 graduate of Binghamton University where he was a 9-time America East Conference champion and qualified for the NCAA Championships final at 5,000m this past spring, earning honorable mention All-American honors.

During his time at Binghamton, Schaffer won conference titles at 1500m, the 4 x 800m relay, the indoor mile, the indoor distance medley relay, and over 8 kilometers in cross country.

Schaffer grew up near Binghamton in Endicott, NY, where his family still resides. He graduated with a degree in electrical engineering and a Masters in business administration.

In his final year at Binghamton, Scjaffer lowered his personal bests across all distances from the 800m up to 5,000m, including at 1500m: 3:40.98; 1 Mile: 3:57.47; 3,000m: 7:50.05; and at 5.000m: 13:36.