Michael Haskin Battles With Philip Blum For .02 1600m Win

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An incredible battle took place in the boys 1600m at the NCHSAA 4A State Championship.  

Tate Shore (Reagan), Michael Haskin (Asheville), Jacob Dorsch (Pinecrest) and Philip Blum (Riverside) entered as the favorites with the fastest four marks in the field running from 4:15-4:17 so far this indoor season.

The pace got out fast as everyone battles for positioning as they'd break from the two alleys at the 150m mark out in 30 seconds, but would slow as everyone would settle into place going through 400m as Shore would take them through in 65 seconds and then 1:14 through the 800m pacing them for a 4:28 1600m.

Dorsch would pick up the pace with 800m to go and would click off 30 second 200m laps making the field really fight to hang with him over the final half of the race.  He'd hold the lead through the bell lap with Blum, Haskin and Shore trying to hold on.  

On the backstretch Blum would work to move past Blum to the lead as Haskin and Shore tried to make up ground doing all they could to find another gear.  Haskin would slowly start to catch Blum over the final 100m and move onto the outside of Blum and just catch him at the line winning in 4:14.94 to 4:14.96 as both boys leaned for the stat title.  

Shore would just pass Dorsch for third running 4:16.32 to 4:16.59.

Haskin's final 200m was 28.32 to Blum's 28.97 as the two would run a 2:14/2:00 negative split for the race with 57 second final 400m.

Blum late in the day would earn the state title he just missed out on running 9:19 in a tactical 3200m pulling away from a field of 5 towards the tail end of the race ahead of Cedar Nichols-Barnhart(RJ Reynolds), Haskin, Sawyer Lisk (Leesville Road) and Cam Kuss (Broughton) who were all in contention towards the end of the race.