2017 Boys XC Preseason Rankings (Top 50)

Northport!!! They're back and better than ever, coming off of a state and national 4x8 title and 2nd place DMr at nationals. The team definitely lacked deep talent after mikey graduated but they seem to have refueled and are ready to go. These boys have huge goals and are highly driven. They have a strong front runner in Isaiah claiborne and a lot of depth. Although they may not seem like much on paper based on XC times, be ready to see them making an impact.

Thank you for that comment. That was a miss on my part. I looked them up and was very impressed with their improvements on the track. I'll have to look at them a little more, but right now I have them slotted in at #48. It's not always easy for me to find teams like that, so if you or anyone else has a team that I may have missed, please comment.

Brentwood Academy is really good, but they will be missing cheeseman and holiday.

Are Imputing Altitude adjustments? There is a few schools that follow those. NCAA (Rules) does use altitude adjustments!

Are you sure that both of those runners will be missing? I know Brentwood High's top 2 won't be running for the team. Did the same thing happen to Brentwood Academy as well?

might be a little biased because i'm from NH, but Concord should be really strong this year, probably 2nd or 3rd in New England.

One BA kid moved, while the other now goes to a different school.

CBA is ranked too high.

Can we see the data you used to generate these? Always love looking at rankings, thanks.

@sixo3 I don't quite see Concord as being in the top 50 yet. They have some good pieces to work with, but to really compete with Statples and La Salle, someone is going to need to step up as an elite level front runner. It could be Mackenzie, but I'm not convinced yet. There are some teams that surprise people every year though, so you never know.

@Western KY guy Thank you.

@ac;kn You could be right. I see Hill and Kilcooley being a very strong top 2, and behind them they have plenty of depth (like always). Just to compare them to the teams behind them, Wayzata appears slightly better at the 1 and 5 spots, but CBA's advantage on the 2 runner more than makes up for it. Roosevelt has a similar top 2 to CBA, but I prefer CBA's 4 and 5 runners to Roosevelt's. If I remember correctly, they were also suffering with some illnesses last year, too. We'll see how they do as the season goes along, but for now I'm sticking with them at #5.

@Nice Work Thank you! A lot of time and effort went into these, so I'm always happy to hear that people enjoy it. I have all of my data in an excel spreadsheet, and I may consider sharing it at some point (it wouldn't be until at least next weekend if I do decide to do that). The process was basically looking at all the teams that were ranked highly by Milesplit's ranking system at the state level. I went through each state 1 by 1 (XC and track) to try and make sure I had every team. When I found a team, I would look through all of the meets available on Tully to find their top speed ratings. Then, I would find their track PRs and how much they improved from last year. I would look at all that information and then try to figure out what their speed ratings next year would be. Once I had those for all of the teams I could find, I went through old NXNs to find out about how many points each speed rating would get you in a normal year. I added those numbers up, which is the number that appears next to each team. That generated the initial rankings. Then I made changes to it however I saw fit (boosting team's with big improvements and strong programs, dropping teams with unimpressive track seasons or other concerns). Comments on Let'sRun and Tully's Rankings helped fuel some of those changes.

Next year's Burnt Hills team should be insanely good. They return their entire team next year.

Will you be doing girls preseason rankings too?

@Jello Yeah, they're the only team in the top 50 that can say that. The fact that they're at #8 for this year is pretty scary. One thing to note is that since Tully is based in New York, there is more data about New York teams, which means there are more chances to get high speed ratings. It's also worth mentioning that this team didn't look all that great down the stretch and ended up only finishing 7th at the New York regional. Obviously, I'm predicting that won't happen again this year, but you never know. This is definitely one of the teams I'm most excited for this year.

@Chocolate Milk I did work on some girls rankings. However, I quickly realized that's it's a lot harder. I tried applying the same technique as I did for the boys, but compared to the boys, the fluctuations in track times from year to year were huge. Girls running 30 seconds to a minute faster or slower than last year in the 3200 weren't that uncommon. Plus, so many of the top teams each year have freshmen in scoring positions, and in the majority of states, there is no way to know who each team will pick up. That being said, I will release them, just know that I have very little confidence in them.

I think Princeton should be ranked a bit higher, their track times looked really good, definitely a team to watch

Flower Mound should be #1

Colorado and Utah have 7 teams in the top 50

7/50 = 14%

Colorado + Utah population = 8.5m

USA population = 323m

8.5/323 = 2.6%

Check out Trinity HS and Eastern HS, both in KY

Eastern has three new runners that are both looking to hit low 16s this season

Hey my brother currently runs for Hersey High School located in Illinois! (One of your honorable mentions). I believe they have two of the best sophomores in the entire country (Josh Methner and Max Svienty). I'll say this: they have a great 1-5, and should easily finish in the top 3 at State. That being said, they don't have much depth. If one of those five guys get injured, they might place in the top 10, or they could barley squeak into the top 20.